Dr. Earl R. Smith II

BY TOM WALKER

All new companies start with an idea. When angel investors put their money into a company, they give that idea a chance to generate a business. These businesses generate revenue. That revenue generates jobs. Those jobs create revenue for Oklahoma. Read the rest of this entry »

January 25, 2010 @ 12:01am | The KPBJ

The well ran dry last year in Washington as venture capital investments fell 40 percent to $555 million, the lowest amount invested in the state in six years. The number of deals also declined to levels not seen since 2003 as venture capitalists pumped money into just 103 deals. Read the rest of this entry »

SAN FRANCISCO — Venture capitalists invested less money in U.S. start-ups in the fourth quarter and showed signs of spreading out those fewer dollars among more companies, reflecting continued caution amid uncertainty about the economy. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dana Hull
dhull@mercurynews.com

Solar and wind power may get the headlines and attention, but green-tech experts say 2010 will be dominated by energy efficiency, the mundane but critical process of cutting the amount of gas and electricity that homes and offices use. Read the rest of this entry »

From Dave Berkus

Dave Berkus manages angel funds Berkus Technology Ventures, LLC and Kodiak Ventures, L.P. and is a partner in Trenchant Ventures, LLC. You can get more insights from Dave at his blog at Berkonomics.com. This piece was originally posted on his blog. (Photo courtesy of Frank Peters) Read the rest of this entry »

By Erikka Askeland, The Scotsman

ANGEL investors in Scotland have been forced to fill the funding gap caused by banks’ continuing resistance to lending to promising high-tech Scottish companies. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Taylor

Since 2001, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs build content for investor presentations. Based on that experience it’s clear that entrepreneurs are often successful visionaries who struggle to articulate the essence of their business. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Burnett

If you’re a high-tech company looking for more financing these days, don’t hold your breath for too long.

That’s the warning sounded by a recent survey of companies that were fortunate enough to receive venture capital during the past few years.

Here are some sobering results of the poll released by the National Association of Seed & Venture Funds: Ninety percent of those surveyed see little chance of getting more venture funds this year; 75 percent couldn’t get a bank line of credit in 2009; and 42 percent lost their existing line of credit last year.

That dearth of financing could be a Catch-22 for many entrepreneurial companies, said Richard Fox, a partner in Orlando-based Astralis Group, a business-finance consulting firm.

“If financing is that hard to come by, and you don’t have enough revenue to carry the company during tough times, it could mean real trouble ahead,” Fox said.

On a hit list?

Here’s the double-whammy for companies whose funds have come from past venture-capital deals: As bank and venture financing dries up for these companies, venture capitalists become real nervous about whether their “portfolio” companies are going to survive, Fox said.

“Then they start doing triage on their portfolios,” he said. “That often leads to killing off the weakest companies immediately, so the [venture] firms will have enough cash to put into the stronger companies.”

So the key is to avoid getting on that hit list — no easy task during “a deep recession with a very bad banking and finance situation,” Fox said.

Florida companies, in particular, should hope there’s no repeat of last year’s performance in terms of venture financing.

“Venture funding was bad for the rest of the United States, but it was abysmal in Florida,” Fox said. “There was almost no angel money put into technology companies in Central Florida during the entire year.”

Just how bad was 2009 for venture capital? PricewaterhouseCoopers’ MoneyTree venture survey will provide fourth-quarter and yearend numbers this week. Overall, funding was down nationwide by 33 percent through the third quarter.

Keeping hope alive

Not everyone is so pessimistic about Florida’s venture-capital prospects in 2010.

The Florida Venture Capital Forum said last week it has picked 18 companies statewide to showcase at its annual conference, which is scheduled for Feb. 2-3 at the Omni ChampionsGate southwest of Orlando.

Four of the companies are based in the Orlando area — the second-largest grouping after Miami, according to the Tampa-based forum, which is the state’s largest support-services organization for the venture-capital business.

The 18 companies will each make 12-minute presentations to venture capitalists, private-equity investors, individual “angel” investors, investment bankers and other finance experts.

Since its inception, the forum said, it has helped raise nearly $2 billion in venture financing for Florida-based companies.

Here are the local companies selected for the upcoming conference:

Orlando-based Alinean LLC develops a variety of software “tools” for business-cost and return-on-investment analysis. Its customers include HP, IBM, Microsoft and other Fortune 500 tech companies.

Eden Spine LLC of Lake Mary designs and produces advanced spinal-care technologies for the health-care industry

IZEA Inc. of Orlando is a social-media marketing company that operates a network of more than 350,000 social-media publishers and 30,000 advertisers worldwide.

PatientPoint of Orlando develops cost- and patient-management technology for hospitals. Its patient self-registration kiosk system is designed to increase efficiency and improve customer service.

Richard Burnett can be reached at rburnett@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5256.

John Mussi

Confused by how to finance a small business? One key to a successful business start-up and expansion is your ability to obtain and secure appropriate financing. Read the rest of this entry »

I Business Angel

We have already established that angel investing is a risky business but one with potentially high rewards. So is it better to go it alone? Or seek the company of others? Read the rest of this entry »