NC State University News Services
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Media Contacts:
Glenn Kline, Centennial Venture Partners, 919/485-8844 or [email protected]
Mark Crowell, NC State Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Research, 919/515-7199 or [email protected]
Kevin Potter, News Services, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
Dec. 9, 1999
Venture Fund Affiliated with NC State Marks One Year of Investments
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In the year since its birth, a $10 million venture capital fund started by North Carolina State University has helped launch 10 research start-ups associated with the university -- in a state where venture capital for new high-tech businesses has been scarce.
Among those businesses are a firm marketing technologies that could allow for fingerprint identification on credit cards and automobile locks; a company commercializing semiconductor inventions that could lead to smaller laptop computers and more efficient household appliances; and a business developing new drug treatments for arthritis, asthma and cancer. (News releases on two of the companies that have benefitted from the fund, Sentrisystems.com Inc. and Biolex Inc., are available on the Web at http://www.ncsu.edu/news/ under current News Releases.)
The Centennial Venture Partners (CVP) fund, created in the fall of 1998, is one of only a few venture capital funds nationwide investing specifically in start-up companies associated with a university. In its first year, CVP invested in 10 start-up companies, eight of which are located on Centennial Campus, NC State's 1,000-acre research park. Together those companies employ 35 workers, many of which are NC State students and graduates.
University leaders say Centennial Venture Partners furthers NC State's mission to improve the local, state and regional economy by creating jobs and transferring technological innovations from university labs to the marketplace. It's especially important as a source of venture capital in a state where seed/early-stage funding has traditionally been hard to find.
"NC State is home to a tremendous research and technology base, but the lack of capital for start-up companies in North Carolina has slowed the commercialization of innovations by faculty and other people affiliated with the university," said Mark Crowell, NC State's associate vice chancellor for technology transfer and industry research. "Centennial Venture Partners provides that seed and early-stage funding. It's also a great way to encourage our faculty to market their innovations."
Now that CVP is nearly fully committed, NC State is exploring the possibility of creating a second such venture capital fund.
The fund was established by NC State and by the N.C. Technological Development Authority (NC-TDA), a private, nonprofit small-business incubator and advocacy organization. The NC State University Endowment, together with 13 nonprofit university foundations, provided $10 million in private seed money to launch the fund.
CVP was set up to be legally independent of the university, though it remains closely integrated with NC State. "NC State showed great vision to recognize that forming a fund like this can benefit the university," said Glenn Kline, managing director of the fund. "That took a lot of innovation and insight."
For start-up companies to be eligible for an investment from CVP, they must be affiliated with the university. That means they must be attempting to commercialize research developed at the university; be sponsoring research at NC State; be located on Centennial Campus or be willing to locate there; or be founded by NC State faculty members, employees or alumni looking to commercialize their research.
Many potential companies have been referred to Kline by the NC State Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Research. In choosing the 10 companies in which to invest, CVP considered more than 80 possible investment opportunities from departments across the NC State campus and from entities affiliated with the university. "The entrepreneurial spirit is really picking up at NC State," he said. "People are seeing opportunities to commercialize their research."
Kline said about one-third of the firms receiving funding are associated with the life sciences, about one-third with advanced materials and electronics, and one-third with Internet or information technology.
Those companies receive more than financial assistance. Centennial Venture Partners and the NC State Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Research help them develop business plans, recruit management teams and attract additional investors. Many have used their funding from CVP to leverage investment from other venture capital funds.
The firms also can take advantage of services offered by the Entrepreneurial Development Center @ NC State, an 18,000-square-foot small business incubator that opened in October on Centennial Campus. Managed by the NC-TDA, the Entrepreneurial Development Center offers small businesses affordable access to all the infrastructure they need, including furniture, office equipment and laboratory space.
CVP is headquartered at the small business incubator. Satellite offices of a patent law firm, a business law firm, and the NC State Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Research also are located at the incubator, so they can easily offer consultative services to incubator tenants.
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Following are descriptions of the 10 NC State-associated companies that have received underwriting from the Centennial Venture Partners Fund:
Angelstreet.com Inc. (based in the Entrepreneurial Development Center @ NC State) is an Internet-based investment matchmaker service. Working with broad networks of sophisticated investors ("angel members") seeking private equity investment opportunities with later-stage companies needing $500,000 to $5,000,000, the company will offer an efficient, secure means of capital transfer and data management.
Headed by Louis Lichtenfeld, Angelstreet.com it is an Internet start-up that funds project-focused research in the NC State Department of Computer Science, and through collaborative relationships, in the School of Design. Telephone: (919) 424-3727; Web address: http://www.angelstreet.com.
The intellectual property of Biolex Inc. (based in Pittsboro, N.C.) derives from the work and botanical collections of Dr. Anne-Marie Stomp, NC State associate professor of forestry. Biolex has developed and patented a pioneering technology using Lemna (duckweed) to cost-effectively express targeted genes for recombinant protein production.
The company believes that it has developed the ideal protein expression system that will improve the production of pharmaceutical and other functional protein products such as insulin, interferon and human growth hormone. Biolex is demonstrating the significant economic benefits of using the cost-effective Lemna technology to produce currently used pharmaceutical proteins. Telephone: (919) 542-6598.
Giant Semiconductor Inc. (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center) is a design and engineering company based on the advanced semiconductor technologies developed by Dr. Jayant "Jay" Baliga, Distinguished University Professor and director of the Semiconductor Research Center at NC State.
In portable electronic devices, such as cellular phones and laptop computers, Giant's Schotky rectifiers and MOSFET (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) technologies will allow the design of smaller and more powerful devices, and longer battery life. Additionally, Giant is developing advanced silicon carbide technologies for semiconductor applications. Telephone: (919) 424-3744.
ID Technologies Corporation (IDTEK) (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center) has developed and patented trade secret-technologies that allow finger print identification of authorized card, document and item users through self-authenticating panels and substrates. Devices using this technology register and re-authenticate authorized users without external devices.
The systems, developed by NC State alumnus Bill Lane, can be modified and engineered to meet hundreds of security and identification requirements. Possible applications include passports and visas, security control, medical history systems, driver's licenses, automobile entry and ignition, facility access, locking systems, in-room safes, commercial time-card systems, credit cards, telecommunications cards and cellular phones. Telephone: (919) 424-3722; Web address: http://www.idtek.com.
Nitronex (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center), was founded by four NC State graduates and licenses power device technologies from the university. It focuses on the development of advanced gallium nitride (GaN) deposition and wafer manufacture technologies for the production of wafers, transistors, photodetectors, light emitters, and laser diodes. The company's pendeo-epitaxy processes generate high value-added wafer products and process-equipment solutions for the semiconductor industry. Additionally, Nitronex will provide cutting-edge R&D services to established power device firms.
Nitronex has recently been awarded more than $150,000 in funding from the U.S. Navy and Air Force in contracts that will result in the company's first revenues from materials delivery. Telephone: (919) 424-3772; Web address: http://www.nitronex.com.
O3C.com Inc., involving faculty and students from NC State's Department of Computer Science, has developed a proprietary, e-searchable engine. The founder, Harold Lichtin, is an NC State graduate. O3C provides comprehensive product search and data presentation solutions for the $108 billion retail and $1.3 trillion business-to-business electronic commerce markets.
O3C's technology focuses on the primary driver of e-commerce sales: the individual user experience. To create more efficient e-commerce transactions, O3C has developed a novel graphical user interface, user customization, and quick-product-query capabilities. Telephone: (919) 782-4006; Web address: http://www.O3C.com.
Pilot Therapeutics Inc. (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center) is the first spin-off technology company from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The company anticipates collaborative research with NC State's Departments of Crop Science, Genetics and Food Science. Pilot focuses on the development and marketing of proprietary therapeutic products to treat chronic diseases such as asthma, arthritis, and cancer.
The company's core technology derives from 10 patents and 20 years of research by Dr. Floyd H. Chilton, the chief science officer. Pilot will initially focus on developing and marketing its Ethical Nutraceuticals, which are natural products clinically proven to be safe and effective, and promoted directly through physicians and health care professionals. Telephone: (919) 424-3774; Web address: http://www.pilotp.com.
Sentrisystems.com Inc. (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center) was founded by three former NC State computer science students around technology developed during their consulting work with the university. The company licenses this core technology from the university and expects to work with NC State students.
Sentrisystems is developing new authentication security and identification systems for the Internet. It will initially offer security mechanisms much more secure than current systems. Sentrisystems' next generation security authentication systems are based upon the Web Realm Application Protocol and will enable end users to have repeated secure access to desired sites without continually logging in. Telephone: (919) 424-3715; Web address: http://www.sentrisystems.com.
Xanthon is a genomics company with technology that directly detects DNA and RNA without labeling or amplification. Primary applications include diagnosis of inherited, degenerative or infectious diseases. The company intends to develop, manufacture, and market medical diagnostic systems using its patented technology, developed at NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill and licensed to Xanthon. The technology uses the eletrochemical properties of guanine, one of the bases in DNA, to measure hybridizations and distortions in an expected DNA sequence.
CEO Jim Skinner recently sat on NC State's Graduate School Board of Advisers. The company conducts collaborative research with NC State faculty and licenses several technologies from the university.
Zymotech Inc. (located in the Entrepreneurial Development Center) is a development-stage spin-off company seeking to commercialize an air pollution control technology known as Membrane Biosensor ("MBS"), which controls volatile hazardous air pollutants ("VHAP") and volatile organic compounds ("VOC"). Additionally, Zymotech's technology provides the ability to create a wide array of biosensors using biomolecules (such as enzymes, antibodies and nucleic acids) as catalysts or probes in pharmaceutical, medical and military applications. Zymotech plans to apply its technology to medical diagnostics, industrial production process control and military chemical agent detection.
The MBS technology was developed by Robert D. Shephard and Dr. Steven Perreti from the NC State Department of Chemical Engineering. Telephone: (919) 424-3725.
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