Hello everyone–it’s Victoria here live-blogging from the seminar.  I’m grabbing relevant points, so once again if it’s not a complete sentence, please excuse. Today’s speaker is Mike Volker of the SFU University/Industry Liaison Office.

Mike is discussing the market right now and how it’s a good time to invest. What’s new?  Companies are valued lower, there are more investors at smaller amounts, business structuring is getting more attention and it’s all about an exit strategy, politics.   Mike stresses the fact that you need an exit plan.

What are the instructions to the jury? Pick the most likely to be viable and have the greatest value. What about scale? Do you want to be a hundred million dollar company or a lifestyle business?

Getting Started:What type of business are you? Proprietorship, partnership, LLP or Corporation.  He says you should incorporate federally for a few hundred dollars. Structure of company: who owns it?  Who runs it?
What’s the difference between early stage or start up? ES: team, products, business plan, customers, VCs maybe.
Start Up: one or two people ideas talk to mentors.  Next: you have to sell your story.  You have to convince yourself, others, employees, etc.

So what do angel investors want? Angels invest their own money. (VC’s invest others’ money, so they want to make money.) They also look for any amount to invest in.They want to have fun, coach, a willing protégé, make money, 10-100X their money made back.

Mike now talks about important characteristics for entrepreneurs:3 I’s: Intensity, Integrity, Immediacy, 3 G’s: Goodness, Greatness, Greed
It’s all about P&L: profit and loss. The Elevator Pitch: It’s easy.  Just fill in the blanks: We, (company) ––––are (doing) ––––– for (who?)–––––– who need (address what pain?)–––––––that unlike (existing solutions)–––––– will (do what?)–––––––– unlike –––––––(competitors).

ROI? How do you calculate?
Eg: 2.6X in 3.5 years (ROI=28%) or 5X in 5 years=38%

He also advises us of having a cap table. It calculates or tables the cap in each round for your investment. Basically if you’re asking for $250K, you can keep 75% of your company and this is in the angel round. I asked if you should calculate on the higher side of the amount that you’ll need.  Mike said yes.  And then I asked if that will decrease your chances of getting the money. He said yes!  It’s a gamble, a dating game.

The Terms Sheet?  Mike goes over the sheet and discusses investment options.  Some elements of the terms sheet are offering, valuation, vesting, capital and structure, governance, shareholders and agreement. Goes over Shareholders’ Agreement. He says we need to be thinking of this at the start:
Protect your project
How do you bring in new shareholders
How to buy and sell shares
Vesting/escrow provisions
Rights
Ask: What’s the worst that can happen to me?
Caution: Don’t go with boilerplate.

Now he goes over Round #2 requirements: (5 pages) on Web sites

Product, property, technology, status of business plan, market, distribution, competition, team and financial projections.  Mike says the most important question to address is the market. He says don’t say you are selling into the overall general billion dollar industry. Who will buy it? Why? Potential? Can you make money?  He examples with Apple computers.  He says they own the Apple/Mac market.  100%. Lastly, about the money. It always comes down to this. He says to go to his web site and see the cash flow. Annual revenue is the easiest way to evaluate of a company?

Email him at mikevolker.com

It’s official. The companies advancing to Round 2 of the 2009 New Ventures Competition has been shortlisted, and it’s a pretty long list.  Not for long though as the Round 2 submission deadline is May 27th and the following list will be cut down to 30.

The submissions broke down by type of business as follows:

• BioEnergy: 3.4%
• CleanTech: 17.0%
• Life Sciences: 6.3%
• IT: 20.5%
• New Media / Internet: 39.2%
• Other: 13.6%

And while there was definitely a concentration of submissions from Metro Vancouver, the rest of the province is well represented:

• Metro Vancouver: 67.0%
• Kootenays : 4.0%
• Thompson/Okanagan: 13.1%
• Vancouver Island + Sunshine Coast: 13.6%
• North : 2.3%

The companies advancing to Round 2 are: (more…)

The NVBC seminar series is back after a networking intermission last Wednesday. The fourth seminar takes place this Wednesday, April 29th when Mike Volker of the SFU University/Industry Liaison Office and Western Universities Technology Innovation Fund (WUTIF) covers “The Business Plan”.

While it’s too late to enter the competition, the seminar series is still open to the public. Register online now and arrive before 7:00pm on April 29th to network, enjoy refreshments, and grab a good seat to watch the seminar. The cost to attend any individual seminar is $20 and students with valid I.D. cards may attend for free.

Resonance Technology International Inc., winner of the 2003 Bank of Montreal first prize, has sold two of its revolutionary resonant hammers, with expectations to sell four more this year and twice as many next year. The resonant hammer uses sonic vibrations to drive foundation pilings into the earth quickly, with no ground vibration.

It has been a long journey to refine the technology and deal with market acceptance issues, but president Matthew Janes says a new trend towards legislation demanding zero ground vibration during pile driving will help his company to move forward.

The poor economy, particularly in the construction sector, initially put a damper on expectations for 2009 but Janes reports that the company has had several promising inquiries this year and is currently working on designs for two European clients.

Resonance currently has three full-time and two half-time employees, and uses B.C. subcontractors to manufacture the resonant hammer.

Since placing second in the 2003 New Ventures BC competition, GenoLogics Life Sciences Software has sold its lab and scientific data management software to academic institutions, medical centres and pharmaceutical and biotechnology research facilities across North America and Europe.

Major clients include Pfizer, which signed a three-year global agreement last November to use Genologics’ informatic solutions software in its research labs.

In February this year, Genologics completed a $5 million round of financing to continue with ongoing expansion plans. This is the company’s third round of financing.

The company currently has more than 75 employees and has experienced strong growth, recently posting 65 percent first-quarter 2009 revenue growth over the same period in 2008.

The privately held company is headquartered in Victoria, B.C. Key investors include OVP Venture Partners of Seattle, Growthworks and Yaletown Venture Partners.

Metalogix Inc., the New Ventures BC 2002 BMO Bank of Montreal first-prize winner, grew to 16 employees working out of offices in Vancouver, Halifax and Dallas to serve more than 300 customers worldwide.

The firm, which creates and sells award-winning content migration and archiving software, was generating annual revenues of $3.6 million by the time it was acquired in 2008 by Insight Venture Partners, a private equity firm based in New York.

Metalogix next merged with Europe-based H&S Software, retaining the Metalogix name. The company’s three founders: Julien Sellgren, Rasool Rayani and Geordie Henderson continue to play key roles, with an external CEO hired to run the newly combined firm.

Today, Metalogix Software has approximately 60 employees working out of offices in Vancouver, Halifax, Dallas, Boston, Bratislava, Vienna and Zurich, to serve more than 1500 customers worldwide. Current revenues are approximately $10 million USD.

I think we’re on our way to a great year as my phone has been ringing off the hook and my email box has been overflowing today!

If I haven’t responded to you yet, feel free to nudge me, but I think/hope I’ve covered all your questions.

Some minor points  to remember:

- If you experience any technical issues, please don’t panic. I’ll be online until past midnight, so feel free to email contact@newventuresbc.com. If we can’t solve the issue right away, we’ll figure out a way to get your submission reviewed. That said, we have experienced very few technical problems so far,  fingers crossed.

- Payment status. NVBC updates your payment status manually. If you don’t see your status updated within a day or so, please let me know. But don’t worry if your payment status isn’t correct by midnight tonight – as long as your forms are in and you pay in the next week, you’re in!

Any other questions, comment or email away.

Good luck to everyone submitting tonight.

Today, April 20th, is the registration deadline for the 2009 Competition. So do your new business idea a favour and register online tonight before 11:59pm.

The competition will help you acquire the business basics you’ll need to succeed and if you shine along the way, you might grab a share of the $300,000 in cash and prizes. Don’t forget about the nine business seminars which started back on April 1st – but don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything as they’re all available for online viewing and you can take in upcoming seminars in person or online via webcast.

The NVBC competition is open to everyone in BC and entries are accepted from a person, team or business. Once you enter, be sure to attend NVBC’s Networking Event this Wednesday April 22nd at 5:30pm at SFU Harbour Centre.

Terraprobe Geoscience Corp. took second place in the 2006 New Ventures BC competition. The Burnaby company uses non-destructive Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) to detect conduits, rebar and other structural elements embedded in concrete, and to locate buried utilities. The technology can also measure corrosion in rebar buried in concrete.

The company has grown to 14 employees and is now profitable, with sales of more than $1.2 million in 2008.
“We’re doing really well,” says company president Csaba Ekes. “Our market share is growing, we can afford better people and better equipment and we’re doing more research and development.”

He says the firm is stretching the possibilities of its technology to try to find ways to detect targets that currently aren’t possible, such as finding deterioration in underground water and sewer pipes. “There’s a tremendous need for this,” says Ekes, “because currently there is no reliable way to inspect the aging buried water and wastewater infrastructure.”

Earlier this week over at GigaOM’s earth2tech blog, Katie Fehrenbacher singled out 2006 NVBC competition finalist Energy Aware and their PowerTab as one of 10 monitoring tools bringing smart energy home .

Thanks to funds from the stimulus package and renewed attention to energy savings, 2009 is the year companies are planning to launch wireless energy dashboards that will sit in your home, monitor energy data from your electricity meter and let you know if you’re being an energy hog.

This year is particularly important to these mostly young companies, as President Obama has pledged to help utilities install 40 million more smart meters (basically digital meters that create a 2-way connection with the power grid and the utility). Smart meters installed at homes can unleash data about the fluctuating price of electricity throughout the day, enabling consumers that have energy management tools to shift energy consumption to the time of day when power is cheapest.

Founded in 2005, the Vancouver-based Energy Aware team has developed the PowerTab, a wireless energy display that collects current energy price and usage from smart meters. Demand response company Comverge distributes the device in North America, and the startup has raised close to $2 Million in funding from angel investors in the Pacific Northwest.