The old bank's drive-through lanes were going to have to go. In June 2026, David Washburn was talking with his colleague Jeff Smith about turning a former credit union building into the Rosenberg Center, a new home for the MSU Research Foundation and a gathering place for startups. Washburn remembered the pneumatic tubes that once carried deposits through those lanes. The building's next customers would be bringing a different sort of proposition.
A former bank becoming a place to build companies is a pleasingly literal chapter in Washburn's career. As chief executive of the foundation, he oversees an endowment, presides over venture subsidiaries, and helps connect Michigan State University's research with the practical business of starting and sustaining companies. Money enters the picture often. So do offices, colleagues, introductions, and the stubborn question of where a company can grow.
The foundation celebrated the Rosenberg Center groundbreaking in September 2026. The planned 65,000-square-foot facility will house its headquarters and affiliated organizations alongside flexible space for entrepreneurs, researchers, and corporate partners. Washburn's work has acquired a physical form: a place where the people who need one another might actually meet. Even a promising idea benefits from having a door someone can knock on.
Before the funds, there was software
Washburn's route to this work began in the software business. His early career included entrepreneurship and business development with Wolfram Research, InstallShield Software Corporation, and Kuck & Associates. InstallShield was acquired by Macrovision; Kuck & Associates was acquired by Intel. These were companies dealing in software, customers, and growth, years before his current work came to encompass Michigan venture funds and research parks.
The distinction matters. University commercialization asks someone to understand an invention and the organization that might eventually sell it. Washburn had worked on the company side of that relationship. His subsequent career moved toward the university side, where a discovery must find a commercial route without losing sight of the institution that produced it. His résumé keeps returning to that crossing.
He received a BA and an MBA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 2001 to 2011, he led the university's software commercialization practice. Cambridge Enterprise also lists his Certified Licensing Professional designation. The combination is unusually concrete: experience developing software businesses, business education, and a decade working on the terms under which university software reaches customers.
In November 2011 he joined the University of Tennessee Research Foundation. There, his responsibilities included commercialization activities for Knoxville, Chattanooga, the Space Institute, and the Institute of Agriculture. He served as president and CEO before moving to Michigan State in 2014 as executive director of its foundation. The scale of the assignment had changed, but the central problem remained recognizable: how to give university work a useful life outside the university.
A first cheque, and the next one
In Michigan, Washburn became part of an institution that already had decades of history. Spartan Innovations, its startup development subsidiary, had been established in 2012. His arrival in 2014 began a period of expanded economic development and partnerships, working closely with board chair Randolph Cowen. The foundation's anniversary account places venture creation, accelerator programs, and strategic property development together in that chapter.
Red Cedar Ventures followed in 2015. Its purpose was to provide early financing for high-risk startups built around inventions from MSU students, faculty, and staff. In 2020, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation selected the foundation to manage Michigan Rise Pre-Seed Fund III. One fund had a university-centered remit; the other extended the work across Michigan. Washburn serves as president of both organizations.
In a June 2025 commentary, he put the combined record at more than $40 million deployed to over 225 Michigan companies. Those companies, he wrote, had subsequently raised $1.3 billion from more than 600 outside investors and created over 1,800 jobs. These figures describe the funds and the companies they supported. They also explain why early financing deserves attention: the first investor can help a business become a proposition other investors will consider.
Washburn's commentary included a complication that a celebratory account could easily omit. Companies that begin in Michigan sometimes leave. Larger markets can offer more capital, experienced operators, and technical talent. He argued that keeping companies in the region would require continued investment of time and attention as well as money. A successful launch creates another assignment: give the company reasons to stay.
The landlord has a business plan
Property sits unusually close to the center of this story. In 2023, Washburn described the foundation's support for TechSmith's headquarters near campus in terms of people. The software company had a substantial internship program and many MSU alumni among its employees. Proximity offered access to a university community; the campus itself was part of the company's effort to compete for talent.
For younger companies, the same question arrives earlier and with fewer resources. Washburn described the foundation's approach as helping with business plans and early funding while also seeking a place for startups to settle. As he put it, “we’re trying to find them a home in and around our ecosystem.” A home is a modest word for an economic development strategy. It is also one founders can understand without attending a conference.
There is a practical example in Great Lakes Crystal Technologies, an MSU spinoff growing diamonds for advanced electronics and quantum computing. In its early days, it used shared research space at the VanCamp Incubator. Jeff Smith has described that space as helping the company preserve capital for talent and growth. The commercial question includes what a business must buy before it can even begin its work.
The Rosenberg Center carries that thinking forward. Washburn and Smith discussed a shift from building entirely anew to adapting an existing structure as construction costs changed the calculation. The former credit union had also housed IBM. Its next use is intended to bring startup offices, meeting space, and university commercialization activities into closer contact. The building has already had several careers. Now it is being recruited to help other careers begin.
“we’re trying to find them a home in and around our ecosystem.”David Washburn, 2023
The university keeps a longer calendar
The foundation's financial responsibilities extend beyond startups. In May 2025 it designated $75 million over eight years for Michigan State's Uncommon Will, Far Better World campaign. The commitment emphasizes faculty research and innovation while supporting the campaign's broader priorities. Washburn described the annual support as providing “an annual margin of excellence,” a phrase that makes room for work a conventional operating budget might struggle to accommodate.
By then, the foundation had contributed more than $400 million to MSU since its establishment in 1973. Washburn is responsible for a continuing institution, with accumulated resources and obligations, rather than a single investment cycle. His role includes overseeing the endowment that supports that work. An eight-year designation expresses the calendar on which a university has to think.
The 2025 fiscal-year results show the range of activity around him: $11.6 million in grants, support for 134 MSU technologies, and 99 venture investments. The research parks network supported 58 tenant companies and 1,700 jobs across six facilities, with 90 percent occupancy. These are different measures of different activities. A grant, a venture investment, and a tenant lease each solve a particular problem; together they describe the breadth of the foundation's assignment.
An old colleague, and a serious dessert question
Washburn's professional connections reach beyond Michigan. In 2024 he joined the Cambridge Enterprise board as an external non-executive director. The organization helps University of Cambridge researchers and entrepreneurs pursue commercial uses for their ideas. He took the seat previously held by Lesley Millar-Nicholson, a former Illinois colleague who now leads MIT's Technology Licensing Office.
When Millar-Nicholson joined his podcast in May 2026, they recalled having neighboring offices at Illinois. Their conversation covered licensing, company formation, and the differences between the Midwest and the Boston area. The ease of the exchange came with a history: two people who had worked alongside each other were comparing what their later jobs had taught them.
Washburn summed up his approach with a small qualification: “I appreciate speed, but I also appreciate thoughtful deal-making.” Near the end he turned to a technology involving 3D-printed ice cream. “You know I’m an ice cream person,” he said. He wanted to know more. A discussion of intellectual property had reached the dessert course without anyone needing to leave the studio.
More people in the room
The podcast has become one place to see Washburn's work in motion. His guests have included MSU leaders, colleagues managing investments and research parks, and commercialization specialists from other universities. He asks them about how their work operates. These conversations give the institution a voice and put names beside programs that can otherwise sound like entries in an organizational chart.
In May 2026 he talked with portfolio management director Pete Martin about the first PitchMI cycle. It had attracted 375 startup applications from more than 100 Michigan communities, with Adrenaline Interactive receiving a $1 million championship investment. Martin led the competition effort. Washburn's interview brought its mechanics into view: regional events, finalists, investors, and the work of connecting founders with opportunities beyond a single presentation.
By September, he was back in conversation with ventures executive director Jeff Wesley. They discussed the next PitchMI cycle, Conquer's tenth anniversary, and collaboration across Michigan's innovation organizations. Washburn recalled that Paul Jaques had started Conquer as one summer cohort in East Lansing. The program's expansion had a person and a starting point behind it, details worth retaining as the list of programs grows.
The old drive-through lanes provide a fitting place to leave him. They belonged to a building designed to move transactions efficiently. Its next chapter asks people to spend time together. Across software commercialization, venture funds, and property, Washburn's work keeps coming back to the conditions around an idea: who will help, who will invest, and where the company will go when it needs more than a promising beginning.