From Campus to Company: How the USC Innovation Ecosystem Helped Bring CommonGround Labs to Life

Some companies begin with an experienced founding team, a polished pitch deck and a well-trodden path to funding. CommonGround Labs, a company harnessing data to forecast violence and improve safety for operations and communities, began somewhere more fundamental: with curiosity, learning, and a university ecosystem designed to turn early ideas into real companies.

The journey of CommonGround Labs is not the story of a single moment or a single program. It is the story of how USC’s innovation ecosystem works end-to-end, supporting founders as they move from learning, to discovery, to execution, and finally to company formation and commercialization.

What Is CommonGround Labs?

CommonGround Labs is building a technology platform that helps organizations understand, anticipate, and respond to complex, high-risk environments where information is incomplete, signals are noisy, and the consequences of misjudgment are real. Emerging from academic research, the company integrates advanced analytics, machine learning, and deep domain expertise to provide actionable intelligence in opaque operating contexts.

At its core, CommonGround focuses on understanding local sentiment—capturing shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and social dynamics within communities surrounding major operations. By analyzing these signals in real time, the platform enables organizations to generate high-confidence forecasts about what is likely to occur near their assets, how communities may respond to specific actions, and where risks may escalate before they become crises.

This capability is particularly valuable in sectors such as mining and energy, where projects operate at the intersection of infrastructure, community trust, and geopolitical complexity. Early pilots have demonstrated how CommonGround’s models can help operators anticipate community responses to major developments, adjust engagement strategies proactively, and reduce operational and reputational risk.

“We’ve seen firsthand how this research translates into operational value for mining and energy,” said Fred Morstatter, USC Founder and CEO of CommonGround. “Our early pilot partners have used our models to better understand how local communities respond to major projects, allowing them to anticipate tensions, adjust engagement strategies, and reduce risk before issues escalate.”

Before CommonGround Was a Company

Before conceiving of CommonGround as a company, Abel Salinas, then a graduate student in Fred Morstatter’s lab, was curious about how to translate academic work into commercial realities. In 2024, Salinas began a summer internship at the USC Stevens Center for Innovation. During his time at USC Stevens, Salinas gained first-hand exposure to intellectual property marketing and technology transfer, the infrastructure that underpins early-stage commercialization strategy in academia.

“My time at the USC Stevens Center gave me a behind-the-scenes understanding of what it really takes to move an idea from the lab into the world. Learning how intellectual property, licensing, and commercialization strategy work helped me think like a founder much earlier,” said Salinas.

Advancing Research Towards Commercialization

Further strengthening this pathway from research to commercialization, Salinas was selected as an inaugural Technology Innovation Fellow through USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering, administered by the Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship Hub (TIE Hub). The fellowship supports researchers developing technically sophisticated innovations with clear commercialization potential through structured mentorship, milestone-driven development, and translational guidance. Through the program, Salinas learned how to position products for enterprise adoption, structure pilot engagements, and manage early customer deployments, which came in handy later in the company’s trajectory, in securing their first industry pilots.

Discovering the Customer

With an early concept taking shape, Salinas went on to lead CommonGround through USC’s NSF I-Corps, housed in the Viterbi School of Engineering. The program is focused on customer discovery, pushing teams to engage directly with potential users rather than building in isolation. Through customer interviews and iterative hypothesis testing, the team was challenged to validate assumptions, understand real market needs, and refine their value proposition before formalizing a product.

“Through USC’s NSF I-Corps Hub, the CommonGround team began validating early assumptions and identifying initial use cases by engaging directly with potential customers. Ultimately, their experience in the local USC Hub led to acceptance into the National NSF I-Corps Program, where they received a $50,000 grant, which supported far deeper, nationwide customer discovery of over 100 customer interviews to validate market fit,” said Oscar Nazarrett, program manager of USC’s I-Corps hub.

This phase proved transformative. I-Corps helped shift CommonGround from what we think might work to what customers actually need. Just as importantly, it expanded CommonGround’s view of where the technology could create value, helping them to recognize a much broader security market beyond their initial beachhead in mining and energy.

Learning to Pitch the Story

Armed with customer insight and a business strategy, the next challenge was communication. CommonGround participated in the USC and Techstars University Catalyst, an annual program supported by USC’s Office of Research and Innovation, where the team learned the fundamentals of pitching —how to clearly articulate value, urgency, and impact. The USC and Techstars University Catalyst supports up to 20 startups in a part-time, primarily virtual pre-accelerator program from September through November. Early-stage USC faculty, staff, alumni, and student founders have access to virtual masterclasses with a focus on pitch coaching and pitch deck development, 1:1 mentoring, and peer collaboration opportunities.

“Transforming an innovative idea into a thriving enterprise is an evolutionary process that demands a robust infrastructure of mentorship and strategic resources. The USC and Techstars University Catalyst program provides the essential framework for this transition, offering early-stage founders the specialized feedback and professional networks necessary to drive sustainable growth. The success of CommonGround Labs illustrates the efficacy of a collaborative startup ecosystem in an academic setting. By leveraging the integrated resources of both the university and Techstars, they have successfully navigated the path from complex research idea to a scalable commercial reality,” said Telesha Bowen of Techstars.

Techstars moved the needle for CommonGround – it helped the founders translate a sophisticated technical concept into a compelling narrative that investors, partners, and customers could understand. It marked the transition from internal clarity to external storytelling, a necessary leap for any startup seeking traction beyond the university.

Becoming a Company

The final step (really, just the beginning) was company formation. CommonGround became the inaugural company under USC’s Startup Launch Agreement, a new framework designed specifically for early-stage software and know-how licensing.

Through this agreement, USC licensed the intellectual property to the startup in exchange for a small equity position, aligning long-term incentives without overburdening the company at its earliest stage. USC also covered the legal costs of company formation by working through outside counsel, removing a significant early barrier for first-time founders.

“With the Startup Launch Agreement, USC is signaling that we want to be engaged partners in company creation, not just licensors of technology. By reducing complexity and cost at formation, we’re giving early-stage startups a small but critical boost while strengthening USC’s innovation ecosystem,” said Rose Kiser, Director of Licensing at the USC Stevens Center for Innovation.

For CommonGround, this agreement turned momentum into reality. It transformed an early-stage project into a legally formed company, positioned to engage customers, investors, and partners.

An Ecosystem That Works — Because It Connects

What makes the CommonGround story distinctive is not any single program, but how the pieces fit together into a coherent, founder-centered pathway. Early exposure through the USC Stevens Center for Innovation laid the foundation by demystifying intellectual property and commercialization. Market validation through NSF I-Corps sharpened the company’s direction by grounding the technology in real customer needs. Communication training through the USC–Techstars University Catalyst helped the founders translate a sophisticated technical concept into a compelling narrative for investors, partners, and customers. USC’s Startup Launch Agreement then enabled execution at a pivotal moment, transforming CommonGround from an early-stage project into a legally formed company.

With that foundation in place, CommonGround was well positioned to take advantage of opportunities beyond the university. One such inflection point recently was the company’s selection for DARPA’s Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative (EEI), an external program that provided funding to bring on dedicated entrepreneurial leadership and accelerate business formation. While outside USC’s ecosystem, EEI validated the company’s readiness to scale and reinforced the strength of the foundation built through the university pathway.

From Trojan Roots to Real-World Impact

Today, CommonGround Labs stands as an example of what’s possible when a university ecosystem is intentionally designed to support founders across the full journey — from learning, to discovery, to launch.

“At USC, we have intentionally built an ecosystem that goes beyond simply just supporting research, but also jumpstarts new ventures by providing a clear, end-to-end pathway for innovation,” said Steven Moldin, Associate Vice President of Research Strategy and Innovation. “By connecting our researchers with critical resources like Techstars and providing frameworks like the Startup Launch Agreement, we are ensuring that the groundbreaking work happening in our labs, like the advanced analytics at CommonGround, can be successfully translated into solutions that improve safety and impact society for the better.”

Fight On — from campus to company to community!