Last year, I introduced a multi-part blog built on the premise that an effective fundraising program is investor-centric, milestone-driven, realistic, targeted, anticipatory, and market facing. To date, I have written on the merits of strategic fundraising and discussed details on making your activities "investor-centric". Today, let's discuss the concept of being milestone-driven.
One of my earliest lessons in entrepreneurship was the concept of the risk-return tradeoff. Core to this concept is that investors are naturally inclined to avoid risk and, all things being equal, prefer less risk. The corollary of this concept is that investors will only bear additional risk under the prospect of increased rewards.
In applying this model to the real world, it is easy to see how an investment in a well established public company is less risky than an investment in a university spin out in nanotechnology. It gets a little murkier, however, when you assess the riskiness of that same university spinout today and then again twelve months later. Here is where milestones come in handy.
Milestones are company acheivements that significantly reduce the risk of an investment. The key attribute of this definition is the adverb significantly. From my experience, all company acheivements are not created equal. Closing on a key hire is important but bringing a product to makret is big and getting someone to pay for your product is even bigger! The latter two accomplishments are the type of milestones that significantly reduce the risk profile of your company and increase its attractiveness to investors. Raise money in advance of such milestones and you run the risk of overpaying for capital and delaying additional fundraising while you try to achieve unrealistic milestones. You may run out of money in the meantime! The key is to commence your fundraising to coincide with the accomplishment of key milestones and it is equally important to present a plan to investors that achieves additional milestones with the funding you seek. Good luck and stay tuned!
PWC has recently released its annual list of Georgia's Top 25 Venture Capital Deals of 2008. We're proud to report that ATDC graduates and member companies comprised 8 of the top 25. These 8 companies have raised a combined total capital of $138.2M and are creating jobs for Georgia and helping to strengthen Georgia's entrepreneurial base.
Congratulations to the 8 ATDC companies:
|
·
Suniva Inc.
|
$50.0M
|
|
·
EnerTech Environmental Inc.
|
$42.0M
|
|
·
Oversight Systems, Inc
|
$10.2M
|
|
·
Qcept Technologies Inc
|
$9.5M
|
|
·
Clearleap, Inc.
|
$9.0M
|
|
·
FTRANS Corp
|
$7.5M
|
|
·
VT Silicon Inc
|
$5.5M
|
|
·
Qualtre Inc
|
$5.0M
|
Check out the other Top 10 deals in Georgia!
Georgia’s Top 40 Innovative companies were announced today and ATDC is proud to boast that five ATDC member companies made the Top 10! A total of 7 ATDC member companies and 4 ATDC graduate companies are included in the Top 40. Now that these companies have the prestigious honor of winning a spot on the Top 10, they are busy preparing for a presentation at the Georgia Technology Summit.
The ATDC Companies in the Top 10 are:
- Asankya – enabling cloud services to be fast, secure, and globally consistent
- PlayON Sports – offers a comprehensive broadcast solution for untelevised live events
- Pramana – developing a solution to help secure the Internet for meaningful human interactions
- Purewire – delivers a multi-tenant, high-speed Web security Software-as-a-Service that protects business users from malicious people, places and things
- Suniva – focuses on the development, manufacturing and delivery of low-cost, high-efficiency silicon solar cells for clean power generation
Additional ATDC companies and graduates in the Top 40 are:
- FTRANS
- Neurotic Media
- Oversight Systems
- Simatra Modeling Technologies
- Vendormate
- WorthPoint Corporation
Please join us in congratulating our innovative companies!
Update: Let’s congratulate all the companies. Here is a complete list.
2008 was an eventful year for everyone – including ATDC. And while New Years is well past, we are going to look back to celebrate and share some of our achievements. We made great strides to achieve our vision to be the world’s best science and technology incubator producing successful graduate companies and making Georgia a leader in technology entrepreneurship.
The highlights from 2008 showcase the strength of ATDC’s programs from interactions with start-up companies to providing valuable resources to the entrepreneur community. Foremost, we celebrated the success of six of our member companies and formally recognized their graduation from ATDC. Additionally, we welcomed 14 new member companies and expanded ATDC’s impact by assisting over 200 early stage technology companies. We moved the annual Entrepreneur’s Showcase to its new home at The Historic Biltmore Hotel and attracted over 700 attendees to this premier technology gathering. The Peachseedz blog has continued to draw increased readership and is now a library of resources and best practices for entrepreneurs throughout the state. And, with such obvious demand, we added a new team member, David Sung, as a venture catalyst and manager of the ATDC Seed Fund.
Educational events remained an important tool for entrepreneur outreach in 2008. ATDC:
- Played a leadership role in marquee events like CapVenture, the TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs Society, and Atlanta Startup Weekend 2;
- Launched Meet the VC, a new program designed to foster relationships between entrepreneurs and investors;
- Expanded our BrownBag series to provide hands-on education not only to our member companies, but also to Georgia’s entire entrepreneurial community.
Reflecting on 2008, ATDC is proud of its contribution to Georgia’s technology community and we are excited about the prospects of 2009. We welcome your continued support and we look forward to reporting next year on our relevant acomplishments!
Last week ATDC member company Suniva announced its plans to locate a $75 million plant in Norcross. This initiative will create 100 high quality jobs and is a great win for Partnership Gwinnett, ATDC, and the state of Georgia. The plant is forecasted to be operational in the fall.
Suniva is forecasting that this is just the beginning of some big things. The company is aiming for $10 million in revenues this year and will be profitable next year with $100 million in sales.
That’s hot.
Qualtre has entered ATDC.
Qualtre was founded in 1995 2005 and is commercializing MEMS technology largely developed at Georgia Tech’s Integrated MEMS Lab, regarded as one of the world’s leading MEMS centers. The company is licensing eight inventions, covering design, processing, and packaging. One invention, the tuning fork gyro, has already been patented. Founders Farrokh Ayazi, Ph.D and Mehran Mehregany, Ph.D. are well-known experts in the MEMS field and have previously collaborated. Former venture capitalist Mike Slawson was introduced to the company by VentureLab and recently joined the team as CEO.
Qualtre fills a large market gap, initially for military customers but ultimately for consumer markets, by enabling high performance, robust, highly integrated, and cost effective inertial (motion) sensing solutions based on a revolutionary micro-machined (MEMS) technology platform.
Qualtre, will have its coming out party at ION on Wednesday.