VRIO.. read especially the part I bolded.. I'm not worried about VRIO
3/09/99 - The Denver Post Technology Column
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Mar. 8 (The Denver Post/KRTBN)--TWELVE MINUTES CAN MAKE OR BREAK A FIRM: Twelve minutes.
That's how long each of the heads of 15 tech, telecom and biotech companies had to persuade people to give them millions of dollars at the Venture Capital in the Rockies conference in Denver last week.
Twelve minutes to face a ballroom full of 300 financiers and sell sell sell themselves, their management teams, their ideas. Twelve minutes to find their fortune.
What's that sound? It's just the hearts thumping.
"I was definitely studying my script," said Art Zeile, CEO of Inflow Inc., who charged up to take his place at the podium, the sixth start-up to present. "It's a significant turning point of our company. It means so much." For Inflow, the conference was a coming-out ball. The Denver firm, which manages and houses networks for software companies, has never sought venture capital. Instead, Zeile and Chief Operating Officer Joel Daly sank $1.2 million of their own money into founding Inflow.
Now, the company is looking for another $10 million to expand its services around the country. With that much at stake, Zeile said, having just 12 minutes to speak was nerve-racking. Especially when he came face-to-face with the flashing lights that kept time behind the podium: green when you start, yellow for the two minute warning, red when the time was up.
Despite the prepresentation tension among presenters, those few minutes are just the beginning.
The truth is, with millions of dollars on the line, no investor makes a decision based on a little spiel. But those 12 tiny minutes are essential to opening doors; if the financial folks like what they see, they go to additional meetings to learn more about the companies.
And, in the case of companies such as Inflow, the presentation is the first time venture capitalists -- especially those from the East and West Coasts -- get a taste of a firm and a sense of whether it's a good investment.
The 15 firms selected to present are the cream-of-the-start-up-crop, said Gary Powell, a partner at KPMG, the financial service firm in Boulder that co-sponsored the conference. The companies went through a tough selection process that began seven months ago.
Most of them are in the earliest stages of development, possibly with one round of financing behind them, or perhaps, like Inflow, backed just by their own money.
And they are big risks, Powell stressed. A year from now, he said, three to five of them won't be around anymore.
"That's the risk and the romance to a lot of people," he said.
The goal of the annual conference is to get the word out on Front Range companies, to investors from both inside this region and around the country, said Frank Amoroso, vice president of Silicon Valley Bank in Boulder, a corporate sponsor of the conference.
Usually about 65 percent of the presenters raise the money they're looking for based on the conference, Powell said. Since 1993, the companies that have presented at the conference have raised a total of more than $1.6 billion.
When I walked into the conference, I expected to hear silky smooth salesmanship for four hours.
What I saw instead were very basic business propositions.
There were some very monotone descriptions of companies developing assorted types of software or medical treatments. And paradigm shifts were discussed a few too many times.
There were also some sparkling performances, like Express Digital Graphics Inc., an Arapahoe County software company that seeks to capitalize on the market for digital photography. And Boulder's NetLibrary Inc., which is developing an online library of digitized books (and says it will be as significant to publishing as the Gutenberg Bible was in 1456).
Venture capitalists, however, are looking for substance, not style. They want to know that the company understands its business market, has a good idea, possibly some proprietary technology or patents, and has a solid team of executives in place, said John Greff, partner and chief financial officer of Sequel Venture Partners, a Boulder venture-capital firm. Sequel looks for early start-ups it can help shape.
"At the end of the day, it's management, management, management," he said.
There's usually one home run each year.
Verio Inc., for example, was a presenter a few years back, and it's grown to be one of the most successful Internet firms on the Front Range.
Who will this year's big success story be? There seemed to be an audible buzz around a few of them, but I couldn't find too many people in he crowd willing to wager on a winner.
"If I knew that, and you knew that ... " laughed Powell. "That's the fun. You get to see this plethora of companies.
"Who's going to make it?"
Leyla Kokmen writes about technology. Reach her at 820-1671 or lkokmen(at)denverpost.com.
By Leyla Kokmen
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