Press Releases

Infinity Venture Group Introduces Innovative Venture Development Model

Rockville, Maryland (April 7, 2003) – A seasoned group of start-up veterans has launched a seed-stage development company, Infinity Venture Group (IVG), which will employ a unique approach to commercializing technology. IVG will develop a portfolio of early stage ventures around university and laboratory technologies in a way that is more active and hands-on than traditional venture capitalists that merely read and fund business plans.

“A massive backlog of new research is emerging from universities, commercial labs, and government contractors, funded by double digit growth in public grant funding and corporate R&D spending over the last five years.” says Ed Addison, Executive Director at IVG. “The current economic climate makes it extremely difficult to commercialize this new technology based on traditional VC funding or corporate capital. IVG uses a multi-faceted business model that combines a ‘services-for-equity’ agreement with seed funding, providing the necessary ingredients to move technology into commercial markets.”

Much of IVG’s early following is the result of demand created by Addison’s new book, “Leveraging the Horizon: Secrets of a Serial Entrepreneur” which documents his experience with seed-stage ventures.

The IVG management team is leveraging their previous experience launching new ventures as part of the model. The core group of principals has managed, from inception to exit, a number of high-tech ventures including ConQuest Software, Powerize.com, and BioSequent Informatics. Both ConQuest and Powerize are now part of successful public companies and BioSequent is commercializing new distributed data management software for the bioinformatics market.

John McGrath, Managing Director, describes IVG’s approach. “The success of our commercialization process is based on the integration of three primary functions at IVG: Our Venture Development Group, which applies managerial know-how, the Commercialization Foundry™, which provides engineering, marketing, and operational services, and our Germination Funding™, which invests the necessary dollars to get our projects to initial product release or licensing.”

IVG has a pipeline of ventures underway in emerging markets including bioinformatics, Web services, and homeland security applications. Recently, both Addison and McGrath have been managing education and research programs at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Massachusetts, respectively.

“Technology owners are interested in IVG because of our proven ability to get their innovations to market quickly with very attractive financial arrangements and minimal cash involvement,” says Ted Bagheri, Managing Director and CFO of Infinity Venture Group. “Investors are attracted to the lower risk/ higher ROI of our company structure. It provides the economic benefits of seed stage fund investing without the inherent risk. Our model is highly flexible so we can dynamically manage valuation growth and periodic distribution to our shareholders, even when the marketplace takes a left turn.”


About Infinity Venture Group

Infinity Venture Group provides comprehensive venture management consulting and capital to maximize the commercial value of technology. We help to define, fund, and execute profitable information technology, life sciences, greentech, and alternative energy ventures. Infinity Venture Group has established relationships with universities, government and corporate labs and has extensive experience transitioning technology from the laboratory to the marketplace. For information visit www.infinityvg.com.


For information about Addison’s “Leveraging the Horizon” visit ww.leveragingthehorizon.com.
 

###