KALAMAZOO ? In 2005, Southwest Michigan First?s monthly investment forum series, Kalamazoo Venture Tuesday (KVT), will feature expanded program content through partnerships with national and regional universities. The goal of these partnerships is to increase the quality and quantity of deal flow to Southwest Michigan.
Gail Lindsey, equity investment coordinator for Southwest Michigan First, said the expanded program is a cooperative effort with universities and corporate technology transfer offices throughout the Midwest. The big change is KVT will serve as a showcase for ideas and technologies from these new partners, with different universities featured throughout the year.
?This will mean better content for our KVT programs,? Lindsey said. ?Entrepreneurs will gain from increased exposure to venture capitalists and the VCs will have a higher caliber pool of new business ideas to draw from.?
The monthly investment forums are held the first Tuesday of each month and hosted by Southwest Michigan First and the Kalamazoo Bank Consortium for Innovation. Tom Churchwell, a managing partner with Arch Development Partners, a Chicago-based venture capital company, moderates the morning-long event . KVT typically draws sixty to seventy investors, entrepreneurs and industry leaders. The program connects start-ups with capital and showcases business plan presentations from life sciences and technology-based companies.
These companies receive critical feedback to improve their business model and presentation approach. At the end of each ?pitch? Churchwell asks the audience for their reaction to the entrepreneur?s business plan. The process provides objective criticism to better prepare the entrepreneurs for future pitches in an often less friendly environment to prospective investors.
?When we surveyed our presenting companies in 2003, we determined that 30 to 40 percent of these entrepreneurs received some sort of funding,?? said Gretchen Johnson, Southwest Michigan First?s director of marketing and public relations. ?In contract, the Michigan Venture Capital Association estimates that half the people that try to get in front of venture capitalists actually do. Fewer still ? a mere one percent ? get any funding at all,? she said.
Johnson said that the KVT program has proven to be such a good training ground that its begun attracting a much higher caliber of start-ups, and it is attracting ideas from a broad range of industries including advanced manufacturing.
?One of the challenges we now face is to continuously reinvent our program,?? Johnson said. ?The bar of performance excellence is pretty high among these types of forums and we want to continue to be considered a leader. We?re very excited about the program that Gail has developed for 2005 because we think it will do just that.?
