UPDATED GREENSBORO, NC – A $50,000 grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center paved the way for a Web-based virtual highway opened this week that is designed to streamline information sharing and investment in start-up technology companies statewide.
The North Carolina Capital Highway is a Web-based, limited-access thoroughfare enabling key players involved in angel and venture funding to transport and trade information that can help them turn the state’s developers of new technologies into investor-ready entrepreneurs.
Timothy Janke, J.D., state program director of private equity initiatives for the Small Business & Technology Development Center (SBTDC) in Greensboro, launched the project this week, after more than a year of planning and development since the Biotechnology Center award.
Janke told TechJournal South the directory will include experts in various disciplines, including biotech, nanotech, and renewable energy, who are willing to “roll their sleeves up and help a company,” by counselling entrepreneurs or are willing to be called upon in a due diligence process.”
In a company’s early stages, Janke noted, “It’s as critical to have good management, counseling, and mentoring as it is to have someone write a check. We want to get that expert experience in a searchable database.”
Joining the Biotechnology Center and SBTDC in establishing the Capital Highway site and a related Human Capital Database are a Research Triangle Park software firm, InfoStrength, and the Inception Micro Angel Fund, also known as the statewide IMAF Family of Funds.
IMAF is a group of member-managed, seed-stage, angel capital funds targeting six geographic regions of North Carolina.
Janke said access to the free Capital Highway Web site is available by invitation only. At its opening, about 100 users are testing the database, he said, though more are expected to join during the next few months. He said
“This is for high-potential angel-grade firms primarily in the fields of bioscience, medical devices and information technology,” said Janke.
“It can help syndicate deals that provide critical funding to worthy young companies throughout North Carolina.”
Participants agree to share information in the searchable database, he said, and agree to be contacted to share ideas and make deals.
“We don’t want it to be a Yellow Pages,” he adds. “We’ll filter out the service providers you can find there. Not that they aren’t important. This just isn’t that type of database.”
He says it will include people with life skills and expertise you won’t find in the Yellow Pages, such as researchers who might help improve the quality of a deal though due diligence or mentoring and “move the success needle a little further.
“To our knowledge there’s nothing in the world like the North Carolina Capital Highway,” said Janke.
“We were already getting inquiries from other agencies around the country and we hadn’t even launched yet.”
John Richert, vice president of the Biotechnology Center’s Business and Technology Development Program, said the North Carolina Capital Highway and the Human Capital Database provide a valuable new resource to North Carolina entrepreneurs and their financial backers.
“Three things are critical in this environment,” said Richert. “They’re human talent, money and information.
“By human talent, in this context I mean management expertise. Money is a continuum of grants, loans, angel and venture funds and individual investors, all the way through a public offering or a sale of a company.
“And information, in this case, includes education about available people, access to money and other necessities. This new Web site brings all those facets together.”
Janke said that even though angel investors understand high risk, “They’re human and they want to notch it back as much as they can.”
“In a month or two, I hope we’ll have a substantial repository of human capital we can deploy. Access to this could be one more element in closing that risk gap,” he said.
The hope is that the directory will help more companies grow and have successful exits. “Then we can do it again, draw more investors and increase the pool of capital available,” he said.
Entrepreneurs and investors interested in learning more about becoming involved in the North Carolina Capital Highway, see: www.nccapitalhighway.com
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