April
3: Venture Forum 2003
The Venture Forum 2003 will address new opportunities,
current trends, market realities, and an outlook of
the future of emerging technologies. In addition to
presenting companies who define technical excellence,
world-class experts will share their knowledge about
meaningful investment opportunities amidst the current
marketplace. Keynote speaker: Shaygan Kheradpir, Chief
Information Officer, Verizon Communications; Albert
Myers ; Corporate Vice President and Treasurer, Northrop
Grumman.
more
information >
Venture
Forum Company Profile: XCom Wireless
by
Wendy
Hall, Larta Staff Writer
During
one of technology's most intense venture capital droughts,
CalTIP winners and 2002 Venture Forum presenters XCom
Wireless, accomplished the nearly impossible last
week, closing an A-Round series with Ardesta for $2.5
million.
Launched
in the wake of the 2000 technology crash, XCom Wireless
was founded by Mark and Dan Hyman. Dan, an internationally
recognized authority on RF MEMS, had been working
with Hughes Research Labs in Malibu as part of its
RF MEMS technical design team. It was there that he
familiarized himself with the defense industry, and
branched out to form a company that utilized RF MEMS
technology for civilian applications such as high-end
electronics. Through the assistance of government
R&D grants, the company was able to weather its
venture capital obstacles and develop products.
"I
founded my company saying I wanted to redefine what
RF MEMS devices are," says Hyman, explaining
the difficulty in trying to obtain A-Round funding.
"We were coming from what is a traditionally
defense dominated technology, trying to immerse ourselves
into the venture capital community, who were mostly
interested in B and C round deals to begin with. So
there was a lot of educating to be done. Once we got
past that obstacle, and after many VC presentations
including the Larta-supported Venture
Forum, we were able to meet several key people."
The government funding that XCom acquired guaranteed
the business' existence for at least two more years.
This enabled XCom to avoid an unfavorable valuation
for the sake of staying afloat, as many startups have
had to do. Hyman says that XCom is in the last stages
of a final prototype that is affordable for consumer
applications, and that the Ardesta funding will accelerate
the pace of the product's entry into the market. Obtaining
the funds at a reasonable valuation, building a strong
partnership where Ardesta offered more than just capital,
and a quicker time to market, were the central goals
of the partnership.
"The
big advantage we saw in taking the capital was to
dramatically improve our time to market and to increase
our reliability for earlier prototypes," Hyman
says. "Most of the other VCS had been very gun-shy.
Yet the ties that we have made with those VCS are
still very strong and many of those who we had positive
relations with expressed interest to join us in later
rounds. By then the VC society as a whole will hopefully
have picked back up, and we'll be able to deal with
a community that is less hesitant to invest."
