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To: Souze who wrote (41368)	3/27/1998 7:06:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 61433

INTERVIEW-U.S. tech venture firm eyes Europe Reuters Story - March 26, 1998 17:34 %DPR %BUS %US COMS V%REUTER P%RTR By Richard Melville NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - Lured by the prospect of robust growth in Europe, a U.S. venture capital firm has set its sights across the Atlantic and its next technology investment fund will target the region. Geocapital Partners, a Fort Lee, N.J.-based information technology venture capital firm will close sometime this spring investment on Geocapital Eurofund LP, a $50 million facility targeted directly at technology start-ups in northern Europe. The fund will take advantage of the shifting landscape of opportunities in technology, said Larry Lepard, managing partner at Geocapital. "Information technology is clearly getting more and more global and we're starting to see some big things happening in Europe," Lepard said. "Many of the spin-offs and other kinds of opportunities that were common here are now taking place there." Lepard said opportunities in Europe will likely mirror the patterns in the United States. He sees software, the Internet and communications and network technology as the ripest fields. A strong regional economy, prospects that European economic union will spur a need for enhanced regional communications technology and expectations that Internet use eventually will take hold as a social phenomenon all make the region attractive, he said. Almost as important, however, is that the region is relatively untapped -- at least by U.S. firms -- as an outlet for venture capital investment. "When we find an attractive company in the U.S., we can count on the fact that someone else has also found it," he said, referring to the sometimes intense competition for prospects. In contrast, when approaching a small company in Europe, Geocapital has been able to sell itself as a source of trans- Atlantic funding, as well as highly-coveted exposure. Such exposure may help if a company eventually decides to sell itself to a U.S.-based industry leader, as occurred with Axon Networks, a U.K. investment of a prior Geocapital fund that eventually was sold to 3Com Corp . At $50 million, Lepard said the fund will likely have 20-25 investors, mostly institutional, but with some wealthy individuals, too. The funds will likely go to 15-20 companies over the course of about three years.