NH TechJots

Peak Pitch Gets Nice Coverage

Peak Pitch, an event where entrepreneurs pitch investors while riding a ski lift, got some nice coverage in the blogosphere for its 2007 effort.  Initiated by my friends at Borealis Ventures, this event is taking on greater prominence.

Om Malik and Don Dodge encourage VC's in other areas to create similar events in their regions.

Rural Entrepreneurship

Small Biz Survival points to a great article by Michael Gurau of CEI Community Ventures Fund, a VC fund focused on Northern New England.

The piece includes a thorough discussion of the challenges and ways to solve them.  For instance, to tap great workers, consider allowing telework.  Definitely worth checking out.

NH Friendly to Entrepreneurs?

NH Business Review has an article today about a study looking at the friendliness of each state toward business startups:

The 2006 SBEC Small Business Survival Index found New Hampshire’s public policy environment to rank 18th when it comes to being an entrepreneur-friendly state. The state’s tax policy was ranked 20th, and its energy costs were ranked 47th.

South Dakota, Nevada and Wyoming were listed as the three most entrepreneur-friendly, while Washington, D.C., New Jersey and California were listed as the least friendly to entrepreneurs.

New Hampshire fared the best of all New England states on the comprehensive list, which had Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine and Rhode Island ranked at No. 42, 43, 47 and 48, respectively. Connecticut was ranked 32nd.

BarCamp Coming to Manchester

A so-called "unconference" will take place next Saturday, November 18, at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester.  The daylong event will bring together dozens of technology mavens and developers who will create the conference agenda on the fly based on the interests of the attendees.

It's an interesting concept and great to see it coming to Manchester. 

(One of the companies I founded, CustomScoop, has chosen to sponsor this event.  If your company is interested, please be sure to contact the organizers on their web site.)

Dartmouth to Anchor Medical Technology Investment Program

From a release today:

Dartmouth College, Johnson & Johnson, and Borealis Ventures jointly announced today an agreement to establish a "proof-of-concept" fund at Dartmouth. Called the Seed Grant Program, the fund will support development of research innovations that could become high-impact medical technologies with promising commercial potential.

Nashua Tech Conference and Expo

The City of Nashua is sponsoring its second annual high tech conference and expo on October 25.  From the event's web site: "Experience a wide variety of stimulating workshops, hear insightful speakers, enjoy the keynote luncheon, see and experience products and demonstrations in the exposition hall, share ideas, food, and fun at the after-hours networking reception."

Registration available online.

Interview: VC Life Outside Silicon Valley

This post also appears on Pardon the Disruption.

I had the opportunity to interview Matt Rightmire of Borealis Ventures, an early stage VC firm based in New Hampshire.  Matt left the entrepreneurial community in Silicon Valley to join a venture firm in NH's Upper Valley -- a move some might not expect from a veteran of Yahoo (he joined them in 1995) and other startups.  He's a smart guy with a lot of interesting things to say.  Highlights are below, along with a link the MP3 of his interview.  The complete transcript appears at the end of this post.

Why did he do it? "At a certain point in life, there's more to what you're doing than work."  He explains that he and his wife wanted their kids to go to school somewhere other than Northern California.

What does he think of Silicon Valley?  First, Matt notes that the culture of Silicon Valley attracts lots of smart people and capital.  But, he says, "I think people have to recognize ... that there are elements of that culture that ... balance out those positives."  He adds, "I think people's priorities are a little skewed, and I think somtimes that impacts some of the business decisions that are made" in Northern California.

What's the difference between East Coast and West Coast VC's?  "I think it's much harder to find capital available, back here in the east, just because of the numbers."  Matt also says there's a difference in the types of people who become VC's on each coast.  In California, "A lot of them have played the role of early stage start-up founder" while in the Northeast, "More so, they come from financial industry backgrounds. They haven't worn the entrepreneurial hat."

Where should budding entrepreneurs start their companies? Not surprisingly, Matt says "If I liked the idea, I'd say, 'you can start it right here in my office.'"  Otherwise, each entrepreneur has to judge the individual circumstances for their company and idea.

What is different about the Borealis approach?  Matt and his partners like to say they are different from other VC firms, and from what I've seen (at least from a distance) they are.  Their philosophy is to get actively involved with early stage companies and try to take them to the next level, not just with capital, but with brainpower and elbow grease.  Matt explains: "Both of those things, though I think that they were the foundations on which venture capital was created in the late '60s and early '70s, as traditional funds have gotten bigger and bigger in terms of capital and their management and in terms of number of people involved, people involved in those firms have become less willing and less able, either to get involved early, or to roll up their sleeves and be very active with the companies in which they invest."

Finally, is there (or will there be) a Bubble 2.0?  "I like to think that everybody -- everybody -- is a little bit smarter this time around."

Download rightmire.mp3

or read the transcript below

NH Broadband Summit Coming Up

"Governor John Lynch and Senator John Sununu will deliver keynote addresses at the Governor’s Telecommunications and Broadband Summit to be held on Friday, September 8th at the Fireside Inn." (release)

More info here.

Startups Just South of the Border

Readers here may be interested in my post on elsewhere on 7 Boston area startups that showed their stuff at the WebInno7 event in Cambridge last night.

SellMyTimeShareNow.com Prospers on eCoast

In 2003, Jason Tremblay and Mark Eldridge saw an opportunity and they took it.  Noticing that the timeshare resale industry is a $10-12 billion business and that there were no easy, reliable ways to sell timeshares, they created SellMyTimeshareNOW.com. 

How It Works.  Rather than serving as a typical broker that would take a commission, they came up with a simple advertising model: the seller would pay once to advertise the timeshare until it sold.

Pricing ranges from $199 for a timeshare owner looking to rent out his interest for a year to $497 to the owner looking to sell a timeshare outright.  The company itself does not handle the sale transaction, merely acting as a facilitator in the deal.  But earlier this year they opened a closing company to handle transactions and they're already up to 7 employees.

The Results.  By applying the FSBO concept to the timeshare industry, SellMyTimeshareNOW.com seems to be tapping into some real interest.  Each week, more than 1000 offers are made to purchase advertised timeshares, with a total offer value of more than $4 million.  Through a combination of search engine optimization and marketing, as well as other online marketing efforts, the site brings in 40-50,000 visitors per day.  And that seems to be the key to the company's model: put lots of interested eyeballs in front of motivated sellers.

Staffing.  Today, they are a rapidly growing business that employees 57 people, mostly in Dover, NH, but some in Orlando, FL as well. (And Jason told me in an interview that they're looking for technical, sales, and customer service employees in NH now.)

Funding.  SellMyTimeshareNOW.com reinvests its revenues into growth and has yet to take any outside funding.  However, Jason told me that they expect to be in the market for venture funding, perhaps later this year.  He also indicated they have had some interest in the company on the part of potential acquirers, though they believe the opportunity for growth is large enough that they would prefer to take on funding to take it to the next level.

Tags: timeshare, nh jobs, fsbo

NH Company Offers High-Tech Golf Swing Analysis

A Bedford company wants to apply high-tech analysis to your golf swing. From a corporate press release:

Bentley Kinetics, Inc., a leader in the field of wireless motion analysis, today officially unveiled the K-VEST™ Product Suite, a first-of its-kind golf instructional system that utilizes wireless sensors to capture motion “four times” faster than a standard video system. The full product suite consists of the K-VEST™, the K-SYSTEM™ and K-WEB™, all components that provide golf professionals and their students with an affordable, state-of-the art, cutting edge instructional technology, enabling instructors to capture and analyze the golf swing motion in 3-D, while providing immediate biofeedback to their students.

Tags: golf, golf swing

Intel in Patent Dispute With NH Firm

From the San Jose Mercury News:

Santa Clara chip maker Intel has filed a lawsuit seeking a ruling that it isn't infringing a patent for a method of chip fabrication held by semiconductor developer AmberWave Systems.

In the suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Delaware, Intel says that its products don't use the same technology as Salem, N.H.-based AmberWave's protected process for coating chips to make them work faster. AmberWave was awarded the patent Tuesday.

Bryan Lord, AmberWave's general counsel, wouldn't immediately comment on the Intel lawsuit.

Tags: Intel, AmberWave, patent, lawsuit

NH Firm Closes on $28 Million Financing Round

According to a company press release, CoreOptics, a company with a presence in NH as well as Germany, "a leading designer and manufacturer of 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s optical networking subsystems, today announced the closure of $28 million round of financing from new and existing investors, bringing the company's total funding to date to over $68 million."

More: "The company was founded in January 2001 and has received financing from leading venture capital firms, GIMV, Quest for Growth, Crescendo Ventures, TVM Capital, High Tech Private Equity, Atila Ventures and others."

Tags: CoreOptics, vc, financing

NH Sees 6.8% Growth in Tech Jobs

OK, admittedly I am a little late to this party, but somehow I missed it when it first was released and I just came across it last night.  The latest stats in the annual Cyberstates report finds that the NH tech community is growing:

New Hampshire's high-tech industry added a net 2,400 jobs, for a total of 37,500 in 2004, the most current state data available.  This remarkable growth was a 6.8 percent increase, the highest percent increase in the entire nation.  This growth was attributable to increases across multiple tech sectors.

Rural Broadband Efforts

The Valley News covers efforts to bring broadband access to rural parts of the state:

As the American economy transitions to knowledge-based services, communities that do not have high-speed Internet will not attract new businesses. “In the 1980s, it was all about connecting water and sewer to business parks in order to drive economic development in communities,” Julia Griffin, Hanover's town manager, told me. “Now businesses want access to broadband, and if it doesn't exist they will walk,” she said.

Which is why the successful passage of New Hampshire House Bill 653, and a soon-to-be-released report on alternative broadband financing options that was commissioned by a consortium of eight New Hampshire towns, may mark a turning point for broadband propagation in the Upper Valley and beyond. “Until the passage of this bill, New Hampshire did not permit towns to use proceeds from municipal bonds to finance broadband infrastructure,” Griffin said.

(via NH Insider)

eBay Conference in Boston Next Year

"More than 15,000 of eBay's 1.3 million users will be placing bids from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center next year when the auction Web site brings it's annual convention to New England for the first time." (AP)

Tags: eBay, EBay Live, conference

Profile: Women's Rural Entrepreneurial Network

New Hampshire Business Review has an item about the Women's Rural Entrepreneurial Network that helps female-led startups in the Granite State.  From the article:

The folks at WREN have been paying attention and have lent their support to more than 1,500 entrepreneurs like Belkas, leading to the establishment of small businesses even in the most rural areas.

Now headquartered in Bethlehem, six miles east of its original Littleton offices, WREN offers entrepreneurial training and education and the opportunity for members to network with fellow business, sharing skills, knowledge and support.

The group doesn't focus on high-tech businesses and the article profiles mostly more traditional enterprises, but it seems like a great resource nonetheless. 

SwANH Announces Keynote Speaker

The Software Association of New Hampshire has announced their keynote speaker for the InfoExchange 2006 conference to be held on October 12.  He will be Mark Cavender of the Chasm Institute.  According to the group's web site, "Mr. Cavender will discuss the current state of the software industry, from start-ups to mature companies, and show how innovation is not only possible, but mandatory for maturing software companies."

RFID Training Center to Open at Pease

The Portsmouth Herald reports:

Loftware Inc. and RFID4U said Wednesday they have entered into a collaborative partnership to jointly develop an RFID Center of Excellence at Loftware's new corporate headquarters at Pease International Tradeport.

Dartmouth Prof Seeks New Fuel Source

An article in the Boston Globe this week highlighted efforts to turn plants to fuel.

Another company, Mascoma , was founded this year by longtime cellulosic ethanol researcher Lee R. Lynd , a professor of engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. They have created genetically modified bacteria that convert sugars into ethanol at high temperatures, making them easier to use in industrial settings. In March, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla invested $4 million in the company, which is also supported by Cambridge- based Flagship Ventures .