Medearis and his two cofounders of Silicon Valley Bank wished to tackle the antiquated banking practices that led to a massive reduction in the number of banks, the disappearance of community banks, and the mergers of Big Banks. Bank regulations and culture prevent banks from embracing tech startups and entrepreneurs as lending clients. The SVB founders knew about Bank of America’s abandonment of its early tech lending, missed opportunities, and bank failures to capture tech startups and entrepreneurs. The old, conservative banking environment during the early days of the tech sector presented the founders with an opportunity.

Banks know that customers hate them. That is the headline from a CNN Business report from a survey of banking executives.1 The financial crisis of 2008 engraved stains on banks that more than 80 percent of managers at banks, brokerages, and other financial services firms believe continue to have a negative impact on their companies. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup saw their biggest fall in reputation. Their names stayed in the headlines for settlements with the regulators reaching billions. Regulators imposed hefty fines against banks in 2021: Capital One, $390 million; Deutsche Bank, $130 million; Julius Baer, $79 million; Apple Bank for Savings, $12.5 million.2 The total fines against big banks in the United States in 2020 escalated to more than $11 billion, including the largest single fine issued against Goldman Sachs ($3.9 billion) and the second largest against Wells Fargo ($3 billion).3

This chapter covers the basic principles, concepts, and tools governing the operation of the equipment and systems described in Chapter 3. The operation of those systems in off-design conditions, steady as well as unsteady (transient), are described using basic formulae and charts.

Steps taken to start a new venture can make for rocky road ahead if consideration is not given to the points reviewed in this chapter. How to select and build a team and fairly distribute the founder’s equity, how to select an advisory board or a board of directors, and the importance of establishing a culture within the new company are all points discussed in detail and highlighted through personal stories and case examples. The main components of a business plan are covered in many texts and blogs, so this chapter focuses on the practical issues that few academic texts discuss, such as: how to perform due diligence on your investors and tips on creating slide decks , pitching and presenting business plans, and structuring financials and milestone to meet investors key concerns. The sources of financing and expectations of investors are reviewed with a view to guiding the entrepreneur or executive through the key elements for success, including successful closing on a term sheet or preparing for due diligence so that the process moves smoothly towards closure of the financing. The specific challenges facing an academic technopreneur moving into a decision-making executive (CSO or CEO) role are reviewed and guidance offered on utilizing the strength of the team around them.

In this chapter, we discuss models for the scheduling of continuous processes. We use the sets, subsets, and parameters introduced in Chapter 7 to represent a facility. To simplify the presentation, we consider problems with the following assumptions: (1) dedicated storage vessels; (2) no storage in processing units; (3) instantaneous and resource unconstrained material transfers; (4) no unit deterioration; and (5) demand that can be satisfied (no backlogs). We start, in Section 9.1 with some background and a discussion of the main differences between batch and continuous processing. In Section 9.2, we present the basic, STN-based, model; and we close, in Section 9.3, with numerous extensions including modeling for startups and shutdowns, transitions between tasks, and time delays.