Putting Your Best Foot Forward

Editor's Note

August / September 2005 By: Bob Cochnar Volume 3 Number 4

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Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Just ask any venture capitalist who is deluged daily with business plans and importuning entrepreneurs. The idea, by itself, just isn't good enough. What's required is the ability to transform the idea into a product that the marketplace accepts. And that's the hard part, since the transformation demands healthy injections of dollars.

All too often, the good-idea equipped individual doesn't quite know how to present his or her best foot forward to potential investors. Organizations like Technology Ventures Corporation, publishers of this magazine, work with entrepreneurs in developing their business plans and their oral presentations. How can you make a presentation stand out among all the others? How can you pique the interest of busy and often harried investors who've seen and heard a lot? It's not easy.

Since TechComm exists to help entrepreneurs commercialize technology, it's appropriate that we launch in this issue a new, regular feature we call "What Entrepreneurs Should Know About—€¦" This month it's the elevator pitch, that succinct and intriguing monologue designed to whet the appetite of a potential investor. While it's difficult to distill the essence of a technology idea and all the trimmings into less than 60 seconds, it's also vital. You won't be sitting down with an investor with the details unless you first get his attention, which is what the elevator pitch is all about.

Future articles will consider such topics as business plans, Power Point presentations, patents and trademarks, negotiating the deal, market research, intellectual property and building the management team. We'll also be producing these articles in handy brochure form.

Speaking of presentations, our investor-readers may be interested in the 2005 Small Tech Investor Forum, September 30, in San Francisco. Investors interested in MEMS, nano or microsystems technologies will find a number of early stage investment opportunities at the forum, which is sponsored by TVC in association with Small Times magazine and TechComm.

For more information, please visit www.ca-ecs.org or call 925.960.1600.

In the life of any magazine, there are milestones. TechComm hurdles past another one with this issue, which has a press run of more than 11,000 copies. Up until now, the magazine has been printed (very nicely, we think) on a sheetfed Heidelberg press. But with this issue we've graduated to a bigger and more efficient web press (the paper comes in big rolls rather than single sheets). You won't see any particular difference in the outcome, but we're pleased to know that our increasing circulation warrants the graduation to web printing. And if you aren't reading your very own copy of TechComm, I encourage you to complete and return the postpaid card bound into this issue, or visit our web site, www.techcommjournal.org.

In the next issue, we will focus on renewable energy, which has become significantly more important in the U.S. economy. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides $4.1 billion in incentives to encourage the production of renewable energies among a number of other provisions that include energy efficiency and conservation measures.

Our national energy laboratories are deeply engaged in renewables as well as energy derived from fossil fuels. A number of their projects are extremely interesting. We will report in full.