UT Austin and the Kozmetsky Foundation

Overview

Who Was George Kozmetsky

Kozmetsky was born in Seattle on October 5, 1917, to Belarusian immigrants. He earned a BA from the University of Washington (1938), served as a U.S. Army Medical Corps officer in World War II (Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart), and earned an MBA (1947) and Doctor of Commercial Science (1957) from Harvard Business School. He then worked at Carnegie Tech with Herbert Simon, at Hughes Aircraft as controller and at Litton Industries on a Navy airborne computing program.

In 1960 he and Henry Singleton founded Teledyne, which had grown to more than 120 companies when he left in 1966. He put the fortune into the RGK Foundation (founded 1966 with his wife Ronya), UT philanthropy and seed capital for more than 100 technology startups. He led the College of Business Administration, now the McCombs School of Business, from 1966 to 1982, received the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1993, and died on April 30, 2003, at 85.

Technopolis

The Ramada Inn Dinner and the IC2 Institute

In 1971 Kozmetsky gathered business leaders at the downtown Ramada Inn and argued that what was happening around San Jose could happen in Austin if business, government and the University worked together to attract manufacturers and back entrepreneurs. Austin then had about 250,000 people and lived on the State Capitol and UT. He later called the model "the technopolis."

In 1977, still dean, he founded the IC² Institute, first the Institute for Constructive Capitalism and later renamed Innovation, Creativity and Capital. He called it a "think and do" tank on business, government and education in technology-driven growth. IC² launched ATI, the Capital Network, the Austin Technology Council and the McCombs Master of Science in Technology Commercialization, still houses ATI, and works internationally in Japan, China, Brazil, Poland, India, Kazakhstan and Mexico.

Consortia

MCC and Sematech Came to Austin

The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), conceived by Control Data founder William Norris as a US answer to Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) chip strategy, pooled R&D for 12 founding members including DEC, Harris, Control Data and Sperry-Univac. Austin won it in 1983 over 56 other cities including Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham and San Diego. Rivals accused Austin of buying the project, but the evaluation ranked Austin first on quality of life.

The recruiting team included Governor Mark White, UT President Peter Flawn, Ross Perot, attorney and former state legislator Pike Powers, Admiral Bobby Inman (MCC's first CEO) and Kozmetsky. The package offered a subsidized lease at the Balcones Research Center (now the J.J. Pickle Research Campus), low-cost loans and mortgage help for relocating staff, and commitments from UT and Texas A&M to upgrade computer science and electrical engineering. Those upgrades underpin today's Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Cockrell School.

Sematech, the federal-industry chipmaking consortium, followed in 1987 and moved to Albany, New York, in 2010. Its Montopolis Drive building is now part of the Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) DARPA Next Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing facility, with 84,000 square feet of cleanroom between Montopolis and Pickle (see UT Austin TIE NGMM Center). MCC voted to dissolve in 2000, filed final papers in 2004 and spun out 14 companies, including TeraVicta, Austin's first MEMS company.

Startups

Austin Technology Incubator and the Capital Network

The savings and loan crisis left Austin with some of the highest office vacancy in the country and a skyline of unfinished "see-through buildings." In 1989 Kozmetsky launched the Austin Technology Incubator with Laura Kilcrease as founding executive director, at first unpaid. The City of Austin, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Travis County and an anonymous donor, widely understood to be Kozmetsky, funded the first three years; ATI ran on $125,000 a year for two years and turned a profit in the third. Apptronik graduated from ATI's 2019 cohort.

The same year he started the Capital Network, Austin's first angel investor network (1989 to 2004) and forerunner of today's Central Texas Angel Network, and founded the Austin Software Council, now the Austin Technology Council.

Legacy

Mentorship and the Line to Today

Kozmetsky held office hours from 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. on weekdays with the front door locked; visitors tossed pebbles at his window to get in. He mentored Michael Dell, who founded his company in Austin in 1984 and named Kozmetsky one of its first two directors, and Jim Truchard, founder of National Instruments, which Emerson bought in 2023. UT President Larry Faulkner called him "the father of Austin's entrepreneurial spirit" at his 2003 memorial.

UT's innovation programs continued after him. Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, winner of the 2022 ACM Turing Award, served as Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise in the Cockrell School from 2011 to 2021, founding the Texas Innovation Center and teaching in the Longhorn Startup program; he is now professor emeritus in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

MCC's 1983 home on the Pickle Campus now hosts TIE cleanrooms, and ATI still graduates companies such as Apptronik into Austin's robotics base. Startups now also reach investors through Capital Factory and the Austin VC community.

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• Austin Technology Incubator
• McCombs Entrepreneurship Complex
• UT Austin Industry-Academic Partnerships
• UT Austin Federal Program Coordination
• UT Austin TIE NGMM Center
• UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering