Group Seeks More Capital for Women

Springboard 2001, the national organization on a mission to bring more venture capital to female entrepreneurs, selected 27 companies to make presentations to VCs on May 9 in Chicago.

As an interim part of the program, which attracted several hundred entrepreneurs, the finalists participated in a boot camp that began on March 27 and received coaching from business experts and venture capitalists for several weeks.

Linda Darragh, director of the Women's Business Development Center in Chicago said, "There are businesses from Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado and one from California that has a call center in Peoria." She added that the variety of businesses reflects the diverse economy of the Midwest.

Chicagoan Darrell Williams, chief investment officer of the Telecommunications Development Fund based in Washington, D.C., is one of the venture capitalists who helped with the screening and coaching of the finalists.

"There is a lot less emphasis on dot-com business plans than the earlier Springboard forums ^{in Silicon Valley and the East Coast last year}, and there is a lot more biotech than I expected to see. There are also a fair number of information technology firms targeting the financial services industry."

Some of the other VCs involved in the screening and coaching process include Kevin Weinstein from Kettle Partners, Waverly Deutsch from Net Fuel Ventures, Michelle Collins from Svoboda Collins and Heather La Freniere from Mesirow Financial.

Williams indicated that Springboard is a much-needed service for female entrepreneurs, but added more importantly, "It gives us access to very high quality deal flow that might be overlooked by other firms. The screening and coaching process is an excellent feature of the event that gives us an efficient way to screen top deals."

Springboard 2001 is a product of a partnership between the private sector and the National Women's Business Council, a government agency commissioned by Congress in 1988.

Darcy Evon writes a high-tech column for the Sun-Times, and is founder and publisher of the i-Street Reporter.

The Finalists and Their Top Female Officers

• Armeta Technologies (Illinois), Terry Pahl, personal financial-advice software.
• Conference Seek (Illinois), Amy Ravi, information exchange for healthcare professionals and associations.
• cue BIOtech (Illinois), Annette Gilchrist, biopharmaceutical products/mulit-use platform technology.
• Decision Insight (Kansas City), Betsy Stewart, interactive media for market research.
• Deuxo (Colorado), Laura McGuire, software to convert raw marketing contacts into highly predictable sales leads.
• DigitalEPC (Oklahoma), Beverly Anderson, secondary market for surplus construction material.
• E-Cognita Technologies (Michigan), Kathryne Zelenock, financial services software to underwrite and close multiparty transactions.
• EePulse (Michigan), Theresa Welborne, software that collects and analyzes data on the work environment.
• Fifth Media (Illinois), Angela Tomlinson, retail-based, community broadcasting network with kiosk interface.
• Handsignal (Kansas), Margy Ronning, wireless middleware solution that delivers information by using intelligent push technology.
• HealthEZ (Minnesota), Nazie Eftekhart, transaction consolidator for health care payments.
• IDC (Illinois), Carolyn Turner, financial management products for small and medium-size local governments.
• Inlet Medical (Minnesota), Lee Jones, medical devices for gynecological surgery.
• Interstitial (Illinois), Martha Bridges, new technology for breast cancer screening.
• IoGenetics (Wisconsin), Jane Homan, highly accurate technology for gene insertion into germline of livestock.
• NGx2 (Illinois), Elise Wood, trade automation and back-office reconciliation for global collateral management.
• Nia Enterprises (Illinois), Cheryl Mayberry, network of marketing services for the African-American market.
• PreviewPort (Illinois), Susan Bergman, publishes and licenses electronic content.
• Proud To Be You (Illinois), Roberta Meacham, provides product for multicultural sites.
• SafeRent (Colorado), Linda Bush, risk management services to multifamily property owners.
• Safety Associates (California), Virginia Gordon, patented testing systems and kits for the food industry.
• SatisFusion (Illinois), Fay Wood, aftermarket sales and support infrastructure.
• Stratatech (Wisconsin), Lynn Hoffman, reproduce skin cells of skin grafts and wound healing.
• Success Lab Learning Centers (Illinois), Marjorie Schaffner, for-profit tutoring for urban, at-risk students.
• SupplierInsight (Ohio), Rebecca Braun, business services qualification and ratings information on business to business suppliers.
• UserActive (Illinois), Patricia Gray, technology allows eLearning courses to be built within proprietary IT sandbox.
• Vanteq (Connecticut), Mary Barneby, new product to capitalize on equity retained in home.