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Read the story about how a CSUF Alumni Raised $2 Million To Grow Stem Cell Therapy Startup

John Chi at CSUF Entrepreneurship

John Chi launched Synova Life Sciences in 2014 to develop adult stem cell therapies to help people with chronic joint issues. John recently raised $2 million to grow his business and is making tremendous progress. The CSU recently featured John in an article that goes into great detail about his entrepreneurial journey. Here’s a bit from the article:

At the start of his time at Cal State Fullerton, John Chi had difficulty presenting in front of his classmates. “He had stage fright and was a little embarrassed,” says John Bradley Jackson, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Cal State Fullerton. “He worked on it and worked on it and became really proficient.” By the time graduation rolled around, Chi was not only winning pitch contests, he was earning tens of thousands of dollars for his startup in the process.

His company, Synova Life Sciences, creates a device that extracts stem cells out of fat to be used in the regeneration of tissue. “It’s 30 times faster than what’s out there and gets more cells,” Chi says. “We’ve got a couple of clinical trials coming online and a regulatory clearance that’s slated for this summer.”​

Chi has come a long way, and he attributes much of it to his time at CSUF, where he earned his master’s in biotechnology (MBt) with an emphasis in business. “Very early on, I realized I didn’t know how to do any of the business stuff,” Chi says. “I learned how to develop a business plan, make a spreadsheet with financial projections, put a deck together and communicate the story of the company so people would understand what we were doing and be excited about it. That was key to being able to raise investment money.”

CSUF Entrepreneurship

We are dedicated to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs develop the skills that they need to compete locally and globally. The CSUF Entrepreneurship program does many things, including: consulting projects where students serve up fresh strategies to actual businesses, competitions for students from middle school to grad school, helping entrepreneurs go from concept to launch, frequent seminars and office hours for entrepreneurs and professionals, and much more. Interested in becoming a part of the CSUF Entrepreneurship community? Reach out to us at csufentrepreneurship@fullerton.edu for more information! CSUF Entrepreneurship depends on the support of the community, please go here to donate.