Business School venture capital symposium for high-tech investors

June 11, 2001
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Business School venture capital symposium for high-tech investors

EDITORS: If interested in attending the symposium or to arrange interviews with any participants or with CVP Director David Brophy, contact Cynthia Shaw at (734) 936-2150 or Bernie DeGroat at (734) 647-1847.

ANN ARBOR—Several prominent venture capitalists, institutional investors and high-tech entrepreneurs will provide insight on the current investment climate and companies based upon the next wave of technologies during the University of Michigan Business School‘s 20th annual Growth Capital Symposium, June 19-20.

Presented by the Business School’s Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance (CVP), the two-day conference will feature keynote speakers John Denniston, chief operating officer of national venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (on June 19), and Warren Packard, managing director of national venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (on June 20).

During the symposium, CVP also will present its “Leaders and Best Award” for excellence in venture capital investing to Mary Lincoln Campbell, Hayden Harris and Tom Porter, founders of Ann Arbor-based EDF Ventures.

In addition, panelists include Dr. Gilbert Omenn, CEO of the U-M Health System; Dr. Roger Newton, CEO of Esperion Therapeutics Inc.; Mary Lincoln Campbell, general partner of EDF Ventures; David Turner, administrator of the Michigan Alternative Investments Program; Erik Lundberg, U-M chief investment officer; Dennis Merrens, director of corporate new ventures at Dow Chemical Corp.; Rick Snyder, founder and CEO of Ardesta LLC; telematics expert Arlan Stehney, executive director of IDB Forum, an international technology development association working to develop open-architecture in-vehicle networking; Earl Lyle, manager of business development for Ford Global Purchasing; John Kwant, manager of Ford Motor Co.’s Venture Capital Group; and David Hartwig of Battery Ventures.

The symposium also will feature presentations by leading Michigan entrepreneurial companies—all of which have commercialized research ideas developed at the U-M, either as spin-off companies or through licensing of University technologies. These include HandyLab, Integrated Sensing Systems, Nephros Therapeutics, Osteomics, InterLink Networks, Arbor Networks, Rubicon Genomics, Thromgen, HealthMedia, Translume, Advanced Sensor Technologies, ExImWare, oneSupply, NovoDynamics, SalesPage Technologies, and Sensicore (selected information on these companies may be obtained from the CVP at the contact points given below).

“The focus of the symposium is to bring to the forefront views from the leaders on the investment and technology fronts who have managed to break ahead of the curve and are preparing to take advantage of the general market conditions,” says U-M finance Prof. David J. Brophy, CVP director. “This is echoed in the sentiment among a growing group of investors who believe that the next few years will be, in fact, some of the best opportunities for venture capital investment.”

The conference, which begins at 10 a.m.

 

Business SchoolCenter for Venture Capital and Private Equity FinanceDavid J. Brophy