"Financing High-Tech Ventures" sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory's Industrial Partnership Office, will take place from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.
A featured speaker at Wednesday's workshop will be J.C. "Hans" Severiens, founder of Silicon Valley's "Band of Angels," a California investment group that has identified and funded 40 high-tech start-up companies during the last two years.
Severiens on Tuesday, Feb. 25, will share his diverse experiences as a nuclear physicist, investment banker and venture capitalist at a director's colloquium. The public talk will begin at 1:10 p.m. in the Physics Division Auditorium. He will discuss directions in high-tech products, marketing and financing; outline what investors are looking for; and offer advice to would-be entrepreneurs in his talk, "Silicon Valley Perspectives on Technology Trends and Investment Opportunities."
Wednesday's workshop will start with the fundamentals of high-tech financing and move to discussions of debt and equity sources, venture capital, strategic corporate alliances and public offerings. Sue Fenimore, who oversees the Industrial Partnership Office's Small Business and Entrepreneurial Initiative said the workshop and Severiens' talk should be valuable to Laboratory employees interested in bringing inventions to market or and area business people seeking technology business investment opportunities.
"We're bringing in a variety of national and local experts in finding, funding, launching and marketing high-tech companies," Fenimore said. "If I were running a start-up company or an inventor thinking about starting a high-tech company, I would not miss this."
In addition to Severiens, workshop speakers include Dick Testa of Thermo Technology Ventures Inc., a subsidiary of the $3 billion Massachusetts-based Thermo Electron Corp., which has launched 18 public high-tech companies for cleanup at Department of Energy sites, natural gas engines, recycled paper processing, implantable artificial heart pumps and other needed technologies.
Other speakers include Dick Harding of Silicon Valley Bank, Doug Hawkins of NASA Ames Technology Commercialization Center and New Mexico entrepreneurs Pat Melvin Oakes of ICAMP, John Davies of CASA, John Bishop of Norsam and Tom Brennan of Micro-Optical Devices. Bill Enloe of Los Alamos National Bank, Monica Montoya of the Santa Fe Small Business Development Center, Michael Vargon of the New Mexico Securities Division, and Terry Winters from Columbine Ventures of Denver also will offer information on high-tech investing.
Previous workshops on entrepreneurship and market assessment drew more than 120 interested business people and Los Alamos researchers.
To register for the workshop, call 665-6756 or send E-mail to: entre@lanl.gov by Feb. 21. Registration costs $20.
Editor's note: Media representatives are welcome to attend Tuesday's colloquium and Wednesday's workshop. A workshop agenda and a biography of Severiens are available.
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