Check Out Tim Tiemann’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Tiemann.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
After graduate school (degrees in Immunology and Business), I went to work for Bayer (Diagnostics and Pharmaceuticals). I knew I wanted to help commercialize technology in healthcare. It was like drinking from a firehose, but I loved it. After moving up and taking on P&L responsibility, I saw business ventures in a more organic way as part of an evolving ecosystem. After Bayer, I went to Motorola Life Sciences and helped them commercialize molecular diagnostic technology out of Cal Tech. After we cleared the product with FDA, I moved on lead Life Science investment banking with a firm in San Francisco and then moving to an implantable medical device company. I knew I wanted to learn more about patents and licensing, so I worked for several years at USC Technology Commercialization. After a few years there, I became CEO of a company developing a cure for food allergies. About four years ago, CSUN became keenly focused on up-grading student entrepreneurship opportunities, and I started the CSUN Innovation Incubator, the Summer Accelerator, and ran the campus National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program. Today, I’m focused on increasing the resources and training available to CSUN students to develop their products/services and de-risk their start-up ventures.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I guess that’s a matter of perspective. Some things happen easily, and others require more work. If you’re looking for opportunities to learn new things, there’s a lot to learn during times of upheaval and change. If you’ve studied how your market works, you’re in a much better position to exploit opportunities and grow while others are just struggling to survive. Sometimes, like during the banking crisis of 2009/2010, you get a ringside seat to global trauma. I was in investment banking at the time, and no matter how hard you worked, lots of firms went under. Just surviving was a really big deal, so I learned how to be realistic about expectations.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Starting an Innovation Incubator not only requires knowing what new ventures and entrepreneurs need but also understanding the backgrounds and challenges faced by the students who are driving those innovations. CSUN provides a stellar higher education to people who are typically under-represented, especially in entrepreneurship. Because I’ve had so many people invest in my career development, this is a great opportunity for me to pay it forward to bright, creative, hard-working students who just need someone to show them the way forward. My goal is not to create “unicorns”, those rarified ventures grabbing multi-billion dollar valuations. Instead, my goal is to teach people how to apply the scientific method of hypotheses formation and testing to business formation. Who is your customer, and what is the problem you’re trying to solve for them? Can you develop and deliver a feasible solution that creates value for both parties? These principles apply to every business, and giving students the tools to collect and analyze unbiased data might reveal opportunities for new products and services. Even if their efforts don’t result in a new business today, the students develop self-confidence in knowing they have the necessary skills, perseverance and emotional resilience to keep proposing solutions to market needs. I’m proud that this work has been recognized by the University Economic Development Association and by the U.S. State Department for supporting our efforts to build similar training programs in Vietnam and in South Africa.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
At CSUN, the Dean of the Business School, faculty and staff truly live the mission. People adapt their own schedules to accommodate working students who can only meet on weekends or evenings or other students wrestling with other obstacles beyond their control. It’s a great team who supports one another as we try to collectively bring the best-in-class education and services to those who want to become entrepreneurs. David Nazarian and other supporters of the college have been so instrumental in providing resources and going the extra mile for students at the school. I’m so grateful that they’ve chosen to invest in cultivating people, and in so doing strengthen our society and our democracy.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.csun.edu/busecon/csun-innovation-incubator