Speeding Up Start-ups in Northern New Mexico

The gap between the early stage funding needs of a startup company and the expectations of a typical venture-capital firm can forestall many innovations from growing beyond a conception into a market commodity. Because venture capitalists and angel investors tend to maintain products and services in intermediate, less-risky stages of development, numerous government and scholastic institutions have created "pre-seed" or gap funds to accelerate the creation of new associates and maintain developing associates straight through the investigate phase so their owners can focus on preparation their businesses for later-stage equity investments.

Hand Held Credit Card Machine

Los Alamos National Security, the public-private partnership that runs Los Alamos National Laboratory, sponsors the Northern New Mexico connect venture Acceleration Fund to maintain businesses with lab affiliations. While such funding is rarely sufficient to carry a company all the way to profitability, it bestows credibility, group exposure and entrance to venture firms and allows an entrepreneur to reach requisite market milestones that demonstrate to a potential backer how the company plans to deliver an inspiring return on an investment.

Taking technology to the people

Administered straight through Los Alamos National Security's Northern New Mexico connect program, the venture Acceleration Fund invests up to 0,000 in projects that find market uses for technological innovations and that generate or form regional businesses. The Northern New Mexico connect program's mission is connecting entrepreneurs with customized resources to accelerate growth of Northern New Mexico companies. Since the venture Acceleration Fund began in 2006, the fund has awarded 0,000 to six northern New Mexico startups that use Lanl-licensed technology, together with biotech, plasma and computer-modeling applications.

One startup, Los Alamos-based Acoustic Cytometry Systems, is developing a commercially marketable version of a portable, hand-held acoustic-flow cytometer invented at Lanl. The apparatus counts and measures cells using acoustic waves that incorporate the cells into a stream for laser analysis. Money from the venture Acceleration Fund allowed the company to furnish a prototype cytometer that is more sensitive, compact, and rugged - and less expensive to make - than a accepted cytometer, and these improvements make the instrument ideal for healing investigate in less developed parts of the world.

"The technical success of the scheme has enabled Acs to grow to eight employees in less than a year and to collect requisite seed funding from incommunicable seed investors," said John Elling, the company's founder, president and Ceo.

The other five startups supported by the fund are:

- The company for facts Visualization and Analysis, created in Santa Fe in 2006 to form a market use for EpiCast, a modeling and simulation law developed at Lanl to help epidemiologists understand the spread of avian flu in human populations.
- Packet Analytics Corporation, a Santa Fe-based company that developed a computer-security software called the Network Forensic quest engine based on technologies developed at Lanl. The law centralizes protection facts in computer networks so that protection managers can swiftly investigate suspicious incidents.
- Santa Fe's ApjeT Inc., which is developing a engine that uses atmospheric-pressure plasma technology licensed by Lanl to make textiles unyielding to water, stains and other substances using ionized gas rather than toxic chemicals.
- Knowledge Reef Systems Inc. Of Santa Fe, a Lanl spinoff that is creating a new Internet-based group network straight through which population can share knowledge and information.
- Cnt Technologies Inc., based in Los Alamos, which produces yarns using carbon nanotubes. The technique produces yarns stronger than other materials of equal weight at speeds hundreds of times faster than other techniques.

Speeding Up Start-ups in Northern New Mexico
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