Cornell University The Johnson School at Cornell University

Entrepreneur in Residence

The Johnson School, in collaboration with the Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise, and Commercialization (CCTEC), now maintains an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) program. The purpose of the program is to mentor and advise Cornell start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs.

The EIR actively works with entrepreneurially minded members of the Cornell community including current students - both Johnson School students and students from other Cornell programs - faculty, staff, and alumni. The EIR assists these constituents in developing proposed business ideas (including business plan review), solidifying business strategy, identifying market position, securing intellectual property, and obtaining funding. The EIR mentors and advises startups, particularly those in the early stages of development and particularly those seeking to commercialize Cornell technology. In addition, the EIR works with aspiring Cornell entrepreneurs to move potential ventures from the idea phase to startup as well as helping Cornell inventors (including professors and PhD students) create businesses around Cornell technology.

Brad Treat is the Johnson School's first Entrepreneur in Residence. Prior to returning to Cornell, Brad was the co-founder and former CEO of SightSpeed, an innovative video and voice communications company. Together with co-founders engineering Professor Toby Berger and then undergraduate Aron Rosenberg, he grew SightSpeed from a university research project at Cornell into the world's premier video calling software. SightSpeed now ships with over half of the world's webcams, and is used for 100s of millions of minutes a month in every country in the world. Earlier in his career, Brad worked for eight years in the automotive industry at Bowles Fluidics and GKN Automotive where he was responsible for engineering, operations, and personnel management within the high precision, high volume industrial units. Brad holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Cornell University.