Speaker: 

Keith McGreggor

Director of Venturelab and Professor of the Practice, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech

Title:

How to Start Your Startup

Abstract:

Everywhere one turns, it seems as if everyone is starting their own startup. What about you? Will you start a startup? Do you know how to begin?

Come learn how to build your startup using techniques of evidence-based entrepreneurship, and how the assembled resources of Georgia Tech, the Georgia Research Alliance, and the NSF can help.

Bio:

Keith McGreggor is the director of VentureLab, Georgia Tech’s comprehensive center for technology commercialization that is open to all faculty, research staff, and students who want to form startups based upon their research. VentureLab transforms those innovations into startups by developing engaging business models, connecting researchers with experienced entrepreneurs, locating sources of early-stage financing, and preparing these new companies for global markets. With more than 140 active startups based on Georgia Tech’s technology, VentureLab has been consistently ranked as one of North America’s top ten university-based incubators for the last several years.

McGreggor is a Professor of the Practice in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, where his research explores artificial intelligence, visual reasoning, fractal representations, and cognitive systems. He is the Associate Director of the GVU Center, which inspires and enables interdisciplinary research in people-centered computing technology, creating new innovations for society. McGreggor is a lead instructor for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, the head of the Georgia Tech I-Corps node, and is an internationally recognized leader in entrepreneurship education.

McGreggor has been an entrepreneur for the last three decades. His first company, Artificial Intelligence Atlanta, was the first AI company in the southeast, which led to a gig in robotics for Lockheed. He has been a founder or co-founder of six software companies and holds three core patents in computer graphics. McGreggor wrote and shipped the first 3D program and first color paint program for the Macintosh. He developed the color architecture for the Macintosh, wrote substantial portions of the graphics system, and managed the graphics group at Apple Computer in Cupertino. A stint as co-founder of an internet company in the mid 1990s led to McGreggor becoming a director of engineering at Yahoo in 1999.

McGreggor holds a BS, MS, and PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech.