Tag Archive for 'Alliance Technology Ventures'

GRA’s New Venture Fund

Published on January 16, 2008 in Venture Capital. 4 Comments

Georgia Research AllianceSigh. I read this story and again, I got excited. Until I dug into the details. Don’t get me wrong, I think more investment is a great thing. I just wish this didn’t have and funding restrictions.

The gist of the story is that the Georgia Research Alliance is going to set up a venture fund to provide early stage financing to startups. The state will provide $10 million and be matched by $30 million by the private sector. So a total of $40 million available for investment.

The problem (for me) is this caveat:

“The intent of the fund is to grow sustainable Georgia-based companies,” said Mike Cassidy, GRA’s president. “The technology has to have been originated in one of Georgia’s research universities.”

Gah! The reasoning behind this?

“Georgia starts with a very limited amount of venture capital capacity,” Cooper said. “Our reason for doing this is to encourage research and let the universities and their researchers know that there will be financing for their innovations. That will help create jobs.”

Really? Researchers at our colleges won’t do research if they aren’t sure their ideas won’t get funded? Is that really the reason that researchers do research at colleges - to build funded companies? I mean, the title you’ve given them is “researcher”. What will they do otherwise? I just don’t get it. The first part of the quote is right on track but then everything just derails after that.

The other thing I learned was this tidbit:

This is not the first time the GRA has backed a venture capital fund. In 1994, Alliance Technology Ventures was launched to invest in new Georgia technology companies.

In case you missed it, I recently wrote a post on ATV. I had no idea the GRA was involved in ATV’s formation. What doesn’t make sense is why ATV was allowed to fold when the GRA knew that they were advancing this initiative. That is pretty puzzling.  Perhaps the GRA doesn’t want a traditional VC structure around this fund.  There aren’t any details in the article so it’s hard to tell.

Scott Burkett is a bit more positive than me. Maybe I’m just being grumpy and should be happy for whatever we can get.  My belief is that by artificially restricting access to funding like this will inevitably lead to less than stellar returns and give folks a reason to point and say that you need harsher terms in Georgia and/or there aren’t any good deals in Georgia.  Both of which we know aren’t true.

The Implosion of An Atlanta VC

Published on January 10, 2008 in Venture Capital. 4 Comments

People have been talking to me lately about what VCs are around and actively investing in Atlanta. Before I get to that topic, I thought I’d talk about a curiosity at one that has imploded (they are not at all that unique in imploding, by the way).

Alliance Technology VenturesI came to know of Alliance Technology Ventures while I was doing my fund raising in 2001. The funny thing was we had previously pitched to the better known ATV - Advanced Technology Ventures (in Boston and the Valley) prior to pitching that Atlanta ATV (ATV-ATL from here on out). Because people sometimes got confused by the similarity in the names, there was even a note on ATV-ATL’s old site.

Over a year ago I had heard that ATV-ATL was shutting down. They launched in 1994 (according to their old website). They had fully invested their last fund and they weren’t raising any more money. This seems to be a common story with Atlanta VCs since I know of at least two others who are in this death spiral.

So the thing that is most puzzling about this is ATV-ATL’s old domain name. You see, they had a very coveted three letter domain name - atv.com (single letter domains are probably the most coveted). These are coveted because all of the possible three letter and number combinations under the .com TLD are registered. So the only way to get one is to buy it from someone.

The domain name now points to an all terrain vehicle site with a small note on the bottom saying that ATV-ATL’s site is now at www.alliancetechventures.com.

I find it very hard to believe that the other ATV, whose sites are at www.atvcapital.com and www.atv-ventures.com, wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to buy a premium domain name like this. Of course, I don’t know what ATV-ATL got for the atv.com name but since I haven’t seen any stories on this, I can’t believe it was record breaking. Given that the other ATV has over $1.4 billion under management, I’m sure they would have carved out some of their annual management fee to pay for a new domain name.

In the end, just another sad story about another local VC gone bust. Looking at their last set of portfolio companies explains a lot, I think.