SwampFox

A pipeline of emerging companies with game changing innovations

Submitted by: John Warner on Sep 11, 2007 at 6:21 am Tagged with: Entrepreneurial, Featured Articles Source: Swamp Fox

Swamp Fox began in 2000 to create awareness of innovations in the region. A series of meetings were held in the next couple of years, culminating in the first InnoVenture conference in 2004. During 2003, we visited with venture capitalists throughout the Carolinas and Georgia to determine the kinds of companies they would like to invest it.

At the reception at the end of InnoVenture 2004, one of the venture capitalists in attendance said, "What I am looking for is a pipeline of emerging companies with game changing innovations." So how have we done?

There have been 50 emerging companies present at InnoVenture 2004 through InnoVenture 2005. We know of at least 17 that have had a subsequent investment round, and of those at least 12 were multi-million rounds. These companies did not necessarily meet their investor at InnoVenture, though some did, but most of the presenting companies were on stage at InnoVenture 12 to 24 months prior to raising capital. So we have, in fact, been able to create "a pipeline of emerging companies" of sufficient quality that many have gone on to raise significant capital.

Not every investment round we know about has been made public. Below are those which have.

We accomplished this from a standing start in 2004; the best is yet to come.