Romibo, like hundreds of other products, concepts or ideas, was spawned on Carnegie Mellon University’s 100-acre Oakland campus. More than 300 companies have gotten their start there since the mid-1990s. The spinoff companies represent about a third of companies established in Pennsylvania based on university technologies in the past five years.

The school nationally is the “gold standard” for developing viable ideas and turning them into marketable companies, said Rich Lunak, a Carnegie Mellon graduate and president and CEO of Innovation Works, a South Oakland-based tech incubator.