Monica Abeita, Regional Development Corp. for Northern NM Connect

Northern New Mexico technology companies have been using the Venture Acceleration Fund since 2006 to help bring their products to the marketplace. The fund, administered through Los Alamos National Laboratory, awards up to $100,000 to qualifying ventures.

This year, the VAF is changing some of its rules: calls for ideas will be accepted year-round, and companies no longer must have a direct technology-transfer association with the lab — though some preference is given to those ventures.

The fund supports tech ventures in almost every step of the commercial process, including proof of concept, prototyping, product engineering, finding customers and market validation. Continue reading →

Michelle Mang, Promotions & Advertising Analyst, TVC

Nineteen startup companies will pitch their business plans before investors May 19-20, 2010 at the 17th annual Technology Ventures Equity Capital Symposium hosted by Technology Ventures Corporation (TVC). The annual Albuquerque forum gives investors a chance to invest in companies that are commercializing advanced technologies developed in national laboratories, universities and other research institutions.

“Even in this challenging economy, TVC was able to select 19 great presenters from more states with a broader diversity of technologies than ever before,” said Sherman McCorkle, president and chief executive officer of TVC. The nonprofit, charitable foundation funded by Lockheed Martin Corporation and the Department of Energy bridges the public and private sectors to find commercial uses for technological discoveries made at publicly funded research centers, including Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Savannah River National Laboratory and Y-12 National Security Complex

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Ingrid Baker, Director of Recruitment Resources for TVC

Technology Ventures Corp. and New Mexico WIRED are planning a job fair March 15 to March 19, but it won’t cost job seekers a penny in gas to get there. Appropriately for two organizations that focus on high tech and green tech industries, TVC and New Mexico WIRED are hosting this job fair in cyberspace.

Participating companies host “virtual booths” at the job fair web site, and they accept résumés during the event. Company recruiters will respond directly to each applicant and offer an assessment of the applicant’s skills in relation to the desired job.

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Supporting low-impact forms of energy generation — cleantech, as it’s called — has been a hot topic politically and socially and has been a subject of mainstream debate and politics for the past 10 years.  As a result of consumer, regulatory and private interest in the cleantech sector, it has also been a hot topic for investing, and venture-capital investment in cleantech increased exponentially in the past decade. In 2001, venture capitalists invested roughly $507 million in clean-technology companies.  By 2008, annual investment in the sector was $8.4 billion.

Where did it go?

Much of the early investment in cleantech was done in the form of large deals with relatively small equity investments alongside massive debt-capital structures to help finance major infrastructure projects in solar power, wind power and smart-grid energy distribution. At first it appeared as though investors’ bets on cleantech would pay off: The price of oil skyrocketed to nearly $150 per barrel over a six-month period in 2008, and equity indexes that tracked the performance of public cleantech companies became extremely popular among hedge fund investors.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama and a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate was expected to lift the industry, as a climate-conscious Democratic administration would make significant investments alongside private investors and create incentives to invest more capital in cleantech, thereby increasing company valuations.

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Gail and Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group Inc. on behalf of Northern NM Connect

Two federal programs dedicated to funding high-risk research and development into new technology and groundbreaking innovations stand to get a little more money from the economic stimulus package than the $2.5 billion already set aside for grants and contracts.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program — the larger of the two — grants money to small and startup businesses to develop products, technology or services that solve pressing problems in agriculture, defense, education, energy, transportation, the environment, space exploration, health and other areas. The Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program requires the business to collaborate with a nonprofit research laboratory or university that can share its technology or expertise with the innovator.

The 11 federal agencies with SBIR programs include the departments of Defense and Energy, NASA, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. (NIH exempted $250 million of its additional stimulus funding from the SBIR program, but outcry from small businesses prompted the agency to set aside $50 million to $100 million for SBIR-like initiatives.) Five agencies have STTR programs. Continue reading →

The next-best thing to free money is available through two federal programs for small businesses involved in technology and innovation.

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) is the larger of the two programs, and it will provide about $2.5 billion this year in grants and contracts to small and start-up businesses to develop products, technology or services that solve pressing problems in agriculture, defense, education, energy, transportation, the environment, space exploration, health and other areas. Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) requires the small or start-up business to team with a nonprofit research entity, such as a university or federal laboratory, and generally involves a transfer of technology, know-how or expertise from that institution to the company’s project.

Eleven federal agencies — including the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, NASA and National Science Foundation — offer SBIR grants, and five offer STTR grants. Both programs provide money that doesn’t have to be repaid, and the business doesn’t have to surrender equity. But, as federal programs, the grants are subject to federal procurement regulations.
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Tatjana Rosev, Los Alamos National Laboratory Communications Office

The gap between the early stage funding needs of a startup company and the expectations of a typical venture-capital firm can prevent many innovations from growing beyond a concept into a commercial commodity. Because venture capitalists and angel investors tend to support products and services in intermediate, less-risky stages of development, numerous government and academic institutions have created “pre-seed” or gap funds to accelerate the creation of new companies and sustain developing companies through the research phase so their owners can focus on preparing their businesses for later-stage equity investments.

Los Alamos National Security, the public-private partnership that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory, sponsors the Northern New Mexico Connect Venture Acceleration Fund to support businesses with lab affiliations. While such funding is rarely enough to carry a company all the way to profitability, it bestows credibility, public exposure and access to venture firms and allows an entrepreneur to reach critical commercial milestones that demonstrate to a potential backer how the company plans to deliver an attractive return on an investment.
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