In a paradox of needing money to make money, some turn to a venture capital company for that financial jump-start.

Located in the Dundee neighborhood in Omaha, Neb., Dundee Venture Capital (Dundee VC) works to invest in e-commerce and web service start-ups across the country. Mark Hasebroock started the company in 2011, and uses capital to help these early-stage companies get off the ground.

“We look for innovative ideas and passionate people that challenge the status quo and solve a problem,” Hasebroock said.

By narrowing the prospective investments to e-commerce and Internet service companies, Hasebroock can stay focused on an area that is familiar to him. He has a wide array of business experience under his belt, most recently in co-founding several online companies.

“I think it is a great time to start these types of businesses and don’t see an end to the creativity and demand for new ideas,” Hasebroock said. “Every day there is a new opportunity to create a unique business. I like niches that get ignored by the market.”

To what niches is Dundee VC paying attention? Hasebroock looks for entrepreneurs who believe strongly in their business and “bet it all that this business is the next big thing.” People who are “communicators that can tell the story over and over” and “visionaries that see a problem, recognize they can solve it and lead the market, quickly” are also good fits with Dundee VC.

“We ask four pretty straightforward questions,” Hasebroock said. “What’s the problem you are solving? What is the market opportunity? Why will you and your team win? Will you quit your job to make it happen?

“The good fits stand out. The poor fits as well.”

Dundee VC invests up to $500,000 in a start-up company, but it provides more than just capital to the entrepreneurs taken under its wing. Business owners can tap into valuable resources and knowledge from Hasebroock’s experiences.

Mark Hasebroock, Dundee Venture Capital

“We can help steer and advise to avoid many of the pitfalls they may face. Some may be obvious and others may not,” Hasebroock said. “Establishing solid reporting and analysis, for example, will help build a meaningful dashboard so the founders can really determine if they are succeeding or failing. Sometimes this is ignored in the early days.”

How hands-on Dundee VC is with a company depends greatly on that start-up’s situation. Though Hasebroock prefers not to “invest and then check in each quarter,” his level of involvement with a start-up varies based on what stage the business is in when Dundee VC steps in to help with financing.

This is true with the companies in which Dundee VC is currently investing. With Graphic.ly, a website devoted to authors and fans of comic books and graphic novels, Hasebroock works on the company’s board, but is mostly in the background for the company’s 12-month plan. The entrepreneurs are more experienced, leaving Hasebroock to be in a “what-if, high-level type role.”

A second company, MindMixer, serves as a tool for community participation and communication. The website is often used by town leaders and elected officials.

Hasebroock explained that Dundee VC started helping MindMixer in the beginning stages of the business. He helped with the company’s direction for the first six months, guiding the business owners so they did not take on too much too soon.

“The founders were very energetic, smart and passionate but had not started a business before,” Hasebroock said. “I provide daily involvement with them as it is a high-growth business that can also grow out of control if we all don’t manage the day-to-day expectations with the six- and 12-month plan.”

Dundee VC also invests in Tripleseat, a resource available to managers and owners of restaurants, banquet halls and other places. The website helps manage sales and event information.

Before Dundee VC, Hasebroock worked in a broad range of jobs. While in college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he sold moccasins for spring break money, and later he had a small business selling popcorn to grocery stores. He also worked in commercial and investment banking. Hasebroock has co-founded several online companies, giftcertificates.com and hayneedle.

These years of experience led Hasebroock to the idea of starting Dundee VC.

“I always thought if I could be in a position to help provide the start-up/seed capital and advice to start-ups then I would love to do that. It seems to be a void in this area for this niche,” Hasebroock said. “I was a commercial banker loaning money, investment banker investing and raising money, (and) founder of start-ups. Bringing it full circle felt right.”

Dundee VC holds a unique stance in its focus on e-commerce and Internet service companies, and in its “lack of red tape and bureaucracy,” Hasebroock said. Over the next five years, he has a goal of helping finance 10 companies.

In recent years, Hasebroock has seen certain trends within the realm of Internet companies. The price of the technology needed to start and maintain a business is about one-third less than what it was three years ago. The time it takes for a business owner to get his or her business going has also decreased.

“An idea can be hatched, tested and live in a matter of days. The mobile trend will only continue to grow and any e-commerce merchant that does not have a shoppable mobile site will be lost,” Hasebroock said.

From Hasebroock’s perspective, it is an ideal time and place for entrepreneurs to start their businesses. Often the biggest obstacle they face is fear.

Hasebroock reminds entrepreneurs that they are not alone.

“Odds are there are a few folks that have experienced and gone through what any other start-up is about to go through,” Hasebroock said. “Don’t let fear keep you from your dream. It can actually be a great motivator.”

“While we may invest, we also want to make sure founders know there is also advice and support,” Hasebroock said of Dundee VC. “We’ve been there and know what you are going through. And we think we can help create a road map for you to succeed.”

Check back over the next month as we will be highlighting the different programs created this year by the Nebraska Legislature through the Talent and Innovation Initiative.

Entrepreneurs can face many challenges as their businesses gain steam. One of those challenges is actually two-fold: how to find and attract talented employees and how to pay them. This article, part of a series on Nebraska’s Talent and Innovation Initiative, will examine InternNE, an incentive program designed to address this two-fold challenge.

InternNE was created by Legislative Bill 386, introduced by Elm Creek Sen. Lavon Heidemann. The law became effective in June and created a program administered by the Department of Economic Development to cover some of the costs of an internship, as well as provide a portal for employers and students to find one another.

Employers and students can register at InternNE.com, a site hosted by careerlink.com, after which they can look for either internship opportunities or potential interns, depending on the perspective.

Also at the site, employers can review eligibility documents and guidelines to find out whether their business qualifies them to receive grant funding to cover a portion of the cost of the internship.

What does all this mean for cash-poor startups? Opportunity.

Consider AgilX, a Lincoln-based software development company. Founded by Jake McElroy and Dustin Clonch, AgilX is in the favorable position of having boot-strapped itself into profitability. While this keeps the company’s corporate equity safe at home, it also leaves much to be desired in terms of paying employees.

McElroy and Clonch learned about InternNE and applied after having incorporated AgilX in March. They were approved to have two internships partially reimbursed under the new program. This perfectly matched their corporate goals and culture.

“We’re not just about selling software, we’re passionate about keeping high-tech jobs in Nebraska,” Clonch said.

The two internship positions have come at an opportune time in the lifespan of AgilX. The company’s goal was to maintain as much internal equity as possible without releasing liability to angel investors.

However, now AgilX is poised to ramp up its productivity, a difficult task without employees – and employees are difficult to bring on without capital. InternNE is making it possible, through subsidies, to bring on those employees below market rates, helping AgilX make its ramp-up easier, and allowing the company to bring on talented interns.

And it isn’t just software companies that are able to take advantage of this new program. “About 22 percent of the positions that have been approved fall within marketing, market research or sales and marketing fields; other highly requested internships are within the finance/accounting, IT/computer technology and engineering and architecture fields,” said Allison Hatch, business development consultant at the Department of Economic Development.

“About 60 percent of the businesses approved for the program are located in the Lincoln and Omaha area, and nearly 45 percent of the filled internship positions are located in Lincoln,” Hatch said.

So what does this mean for you, as an entrepreneur? If you’re looking to expand your staff, and want to utilize this program, there may be grant funding available to your company to reduce the cost of an internship.

Here’s what you do:

• Go to InternNE.com and register yourself as an employer.
• Also available on the InternNE website is the “Employer” section, which contains the necessary documents to be filled out and filed with the state:
• InternNE application form.
• Program guidelines.
• Request for reimbursement form.
• Student verification and evaluation forms.
• Documentation for the Nebraska State Treasurer and the IRS.

After having completed the requisite paperwork and getting approved, companies are then able to post jobs, recruit interns and receive reimbursement for their internships.

For more information on this program, contact Allison Hatch at the Department of Economic Development. Hatch is in charge of bringing employers on board and can be reached at 402-471-3368.

Entrepreneurs with a business idea or business owners who want to grow — especially those struggling to find funding — should circle Jan. 11, 2012 on their calendars. That’s the day Community Development Resources will host a free lending information meeting at Southeast Community College in Lincoln.

Deb Payne, manager of Alice’s Integrity Loan Fund at CDR, said the meeting will provide vital information that business owners need to get started right and head toward profitability, including information on how to qualify for loans. The meeting is at 7 p.m. in the SCC Continuing Education Center Auditorium. Representatives from the following organizations will be on hand to answer questions:

• Community Development Resources
• Alice’s Integrity Loan Fund
• SCORE
• Nebraska Business Development Center
• Entrepreneurship Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln
• Southeast Community College Entrepreneurship Center

“We are particularly encouraging women and minority business owners to attend,” Payne said. “We are wanting to reach those business owners often turned away by banks.”

Payne said the meeting is a great way to start the new year and will provide valuable information about many funding options business owners might not be aware of. CDR specializes in serving small start-up or emerging businesses in Nebraska with several types of loan programs and technical assistance.

Alice’s Integrity Loan Fund serves women and minorities in Lancaster County who have not been able to obtain traditional financing. The loans do not require collateral, but do require borrowers to participate in a business mentoring program.

To RSVP for the free meeting, please email Deb Payne or Dorris Miller. Questions about the meeting or lending program should be directed to Payne at 402-436-2435.

For starters, customer investors tend to be more engaged, according to Isoft Data Systems CEO and founder Matthew Wegener. Wegener’s company has several customer investors, or “investomers” as they’re sometimes called. According to Wegener, his investomers’ attachment to the company leads to networking and sales opportunities for Isoft.

“It makes it fun for them to talk to other people about your business and your software just because they have a sense of pride in ownership,” Wegener said. “It opened a lot of doors for us.”

In addition to the money and the sales bump that investomers can provide, they offer value to entrepreneurs in other ways as well. For example, the product feedback that investomers give can be one of the most beneficial parts of investomer participation.

“Our investomer brought industry-specific insight to our product that made it extremely effective at serving their business needs,” Lyconic co-founder Aron Filbert said. ”Our combined success eventually brought us relative income stability and huge growth potential through their franchising model.”

Since investomers are actually using the product they’re investing in on a day-to-day basis, their feedback is honest and comes often. Where a dissatisfied customer might just shift products or services, a customer who is invested in the company tends to be more loyal to the brand and would rather see it change to suit their needs. This push toward serving the customer can not only make a business more responsive to its customers’ needs, but can also lead to it being more in touch with its marketplace in general.

But as with any form of investment, using investomers is a thing to be done with care. Because of their stake in the company and their direct relationship with the product, investomers can also be a major headache.

An investomer’s ability to use leverage to influence direction of the company and tailor the product to suit his or her needs as a customer can be a good thing, since what is good for one customer can often be good for another – but only up to a point.  

If an investomer requires exclusivity of a product that is marketable to a broader spectrum of customers, for example, the investomer’s needs can produce a conflict of interest that can poison the investor-entrepreneur relationship and put a company in peril.

One solution to the exclusivity problem is simply to charge for it. If exclusivity is going to load a big opportunity cost onto an entrepreneur, then perhaps the investomer should pay a premium.

“We do not do anything exclusive for customers unless they pay us time and materials, handsomely, for doing something that’s specific to them that we won’t use for the rest of the industry,” Wegener said.

The flip side of this coin is when investomer influence drives a company to find new marketplaces and new applications for its products. This was the case for Isoft when it adapted its data management system for used truck parts to managing truck sales, new parts, re-manufacturing and repair work at the behest of one of its investomers.

“They were a fantastic partner,” Wegener said. “We developed a whole new product with them.”

While exclusivity can be made to pay – and in certain situations, there is no choice but to give up a large stake of the company in order to save or even start the business – these things should generally be avoided unless there is ample justification to the contrary.

Clear right and wrong answers are hard to come by in business, and you won’t find any here as to whether or not you should use investomers. On one hand, the brand loyalty, product feedback and increased customer referrals are attractive benefits to using investomers. But on the other hand, entrepreneurs need to be careful about letting investomers use their leverage to cajole them into putting the needs of the investomer before the needs of the business.

Every entrepreneur’s situation is different, and in the final analysis it comes down to knowing what is right for your business. In the right situation, using investomers can be both rewarding and profitable.

Roundscapes CEO Christopher Kingsley can attest to that. His company’s relationship with its investomer, Landscapes Unlimited, has done everything from improve his company’s workplace culture to providing Roundscapes’ with a much larger and more diverse business pool than it would have ever had without the investomer.

“Without Landscapes Unlimited as both an investor and a client we would have failed years ago,” Kingsley said. “Probably our three biggest clients that we have now ultimately came out of work that we were doing for our investor’s company.”

Check back over the next month as we will be highlighting the different programs created this year by the Nebraska Legislature through the Talent and Innovation Initiative.

Being an entrepreneur – or being involved in any capacity with a start-up — can be quite the challenge, yet successful entrepreneurs provide reward not only for themselves, but state economies are also spurred to new heights by these entrepreneurial successes.

With this in mind, the Nebraska state government has created and is now implementing a new set of government incentives for investment in businesses (start-ups and others) in the form of the Talent and Innovation Initiative, or TI2.  The goal is to spur investment in start-up businesses and to also grow existing businesses.

Historically, incentives for business growth in Nebraska were dominated by the Nebraska Advantage Act, a comprehensive set of incentives for new and existing businesses, as well as the Employment and Investment Growth Act. These endeavors, according to the state’s Department of Economic Development website, have provided businesses with partial refunds of sales tax paid on capital investments as well as a tax credit given to businesses based upon their hiring and wage metrics.

But, recognizing that these incentives could be structured in other ways, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman and leaders in the Legislature worked to pass a new round of government incentives in the last legislative session.

“Our vision for Nebraska’s economic future is for our graduates and young professionals to have access to high-quality, high-skill careers with dynamic companies doing business in Nebraska,” Heineman said in an Oct. 3 press release. “The Talent and Innovation Initiative provides tools that will help build Nebraska’s innovation economy.”

In January, Heineman, together with the Department of Economic Development and the Legislature, crafted economic development gold in the form of legislative bills that, in part, would later become known as the Talent and Innovation Initiative – thus named for the section of an economic study released the previous fall. Other significant legislation related to economic development included:

• LB 345: The Economic Gardening Technical Assistance Act. This bill laid the groundwork for technical assistance and a portion of funding to grow the companies already in Nebraska.

“The Nebraska economic gardening program is designed to ramp up small businesses across the state,” said Kevin Andersen, program director at the DED. “We (DED) intend to fund a diverse set of business mixes and technical assistance providers to award qualifying businesses the opportunity to explore their respective marketplaces and increase sales.”

This funding closely mirrors that of another program suited to providing loans to qualifying businesses from across the state.

• LB 386: The Nebraska internship bill. This bill provides funding for Nebraska companies to bring on interns currently enrolled at a two- or four-year institution. A portion of the cost of the internship is incurred by the state.

“InternNE, which began June 1, 2011, has more than 100 businesses that are currently participating who are creating more than 300 new internship opportunities across the state. Participating businesses fall within a wide range of industries, from distribution to software development to financial services; though a majority is manufacturing,” said Allison Hatch, development consultant at DED.

• LB 387: Business and Innovation Act. This bill provided for a variety of levels of technical assistance and financial assistance for the transfer of technology into the marketplace for commercialization in different stages. With funding and assistance at multiple levels, this act packs quite a punch.
• LB 388: Sites and Building Development Act. This program allocated resources to the Department of Economic Development for the refurbishing of industrial sites and building across the state, to make them all the more welcoming to potential new companies.
• LB 389: Angel investment tax credit. This measure provided generous tax credits for those making substantial investments in start-up companies.

Another component of LB 389 is a “sidecar fund” geared toward matching and accelerating private investment, administered by Invest Nebraska.

Given that these incentives are packed with different opportunities, there are many details to cover in soon-to-come articles detailing how entrepreneurs can help government incentives become functioning and contributing members of their successful entrepreneurial family. As always, check back at Nebraska Entrepreneur to read more about these helpful new resources.

Hall started a product called PMOG, later changed to The Nethernet, which focused on making web browsing into a game format. His company started in July 2007 and ran until December 2009. In that time the company raised two rounds of funding, hired and de-hired 12 people and built a user base of around 130,000.

In this candid discussion Hall talks about the joys and tribulations of the startup and where things went wrong. Topics included games, mobile, the Internet, San Francisco, startups, scale and focus.

The Q&A session at the end of the presentation we felt had a lot of good information so we have included it here as well.

Q&A

NEF works as an intermediary between national, state and local funds and grants and the businesses that are benefiting from said funds and grants. In 2010, programs funded by NEF as a contract provider for the Nebraska Microenterprise Act assisted 3,739 participants. Their entire portfolio value was more than $7.5 million. A survey conducted in 2009 of those businesses who benefited from NEF and program support in 2007 showed that the loans benefited an average of 2.8 employees (not including the owners of the businesses) with these employees earning an average of $11.01 an hour.
Recently, NEF began providing direct loans to businesses to fill financial gaps. NEF is planning to expand this service in areas where there is an unmet need. As a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), NEF can provide businesses up to $150,000 in direct loan assistance.

NEF’s provision of loans and program assistance for businesses is great for these businesses, but perhaps its most innovative new product is the Certificate of Deposit Guarantee, which involves bank loan operators. Often, when a business applies for a loan, a bank may be willing to make the loan, but the business owner may not have sufficient collateral. This is where NEF’s CD Guarantee steps in. NEF opens a CD with the bank that is providing the loan, and the CD is pledged as security for the bank’s loan. NEF will support a business loan with up to $30,000, or 50 percent of the business loan (whichever is less), with this assistance.

With the innovative CD project, NEF is an excellent partner to banks as well as businesses. John Laflin of Pinnacle Bank said: “We are glad to be able to work with Nebraska Enterprise Fund to utilize their CD guarantee product to back our loan to help a young professional business get their start. NEF utilized our underwriting information to help in their approval process and it all flowed easily for us.”

One such Nebraska business that benefited from NEF’s CD Guarantee is Rider Chiropractic, a professional medical business that started during the summer of 2010 and serves the northern Lancaster community and the Waverly area. Licensed chiropractor and owner Rachelle Rider has seen an exciting start to her new business as new patients entered her doors at triple the rate originally projected. Looking toward the future, Rider Chiropractic will focus on providing necessary services to clients and growing the business. If the business demand grows beyond the capacity of one chiropractor, there could be potential to bring in another chiropractor and provide a job for him or her and an assistant.

“Nebraska Enterprise Fund CD backing allowed me to realize my dream of opening my chiropractic clinic,” Rider said. ”Without them I would not have been able to have the cash flow necessary to cover expenses until the business could support itself. They made the process so easy and have been a joy to work with.”

Another business benefiting from NEF’s CD Guarantee is Rief Design and Manufacturing, LLC. Adam Rief, a 2008 graduate of the University of Nebraska’s mechanized systems program, and his father Steve Rief founded the micro-business in January 2006. According to NEF’s profile on Rief Design, the business “specializes in custom manufacturing of agricultural equipment as well as general welding on and off site. The business provides new and innovative equipment used in agricultural applications that is more efficient than other brands that customers have used in the past. Their products can be custom ordered to fit the customer’s exact needs…The Riefs have produced and helped custom fit 25 different products.”

Soon, the building Rief Design used for operations and manufacturing became too small to build multiple items at once. With growing demand for their products, father and son determined they needed a larger production building.

Northeast Nebraska Economic Development District (NENEDD) staff prepared a business plan and participated in financing part of a loan package that included the local bank’s assistance. The NEF’s CD Guarantee enabled the bank to make its direct loan (part of the total loan package) to help finance the construction of a new building for the Riefs. With this expansion, Rief Design and Manufacturing, LLC has been able to continue to provide the Riefs with full-time jobs and open a new full-time position for additional help.

Kris Jerke, the business banking vice president of Platte Valley State Bank and Trust, has worked with NEF on three loan deals. Of the process, he said: “I would highly recommend that other business bankers seek out dialogue with the NEF staff to see how they may be able to utilize their programs for their respective organizations…NEF is one of the non-traditional means that needs to be explored and can come in quite useful as an alternative to more traditional means.” In regards to NEF’s future, Jerke said: “As awareness grows, I can see NEFs financing programs continuing to expand in their outreach to assist businesses all across our state. The key will be education of our bankers in Nebraska and their willingness to think ‘outside the box’ in their search to make business owners’ dreams a reality.”

Nebraska Enterprise Fund partners with several business development services that operate across Nebraska, like Nebraska Edge; organizations that target specific areas of Nebraska, like Northeast Economic Development Inc.; those that aid minorities, like Midland Latino Community Development Corporation; those that operate on a county level, like Hastings Community Redevelopment Authority; and large nationwide charity organizations, like Catholic Charities as well as several others in these categories.

A complete list of NEF’s partners can be found here: http://www.nebbiz.org/business_resource_directory.php

To learn more about Nebraska Enterprise Fund, or to see how NEF can help your growing business, visit http://www.nebbiz.org/.

With a combined background in finance and retail, Mike Ewoldt reminisces that even though his brother initially spotted the opportunity for a fitness store in Omaha, both brothers were essentially propelled toward the start-up due to a deep sense of frustration with their current jobs. “I said to Jim, let’s just do it. And on the opposite end of the phone there was dead silence. Now he had to make a commitment,” laughed Ewoldt. He added, “And I remember saying, ‘Jim, are you still there?’ And so he eventually said yes, and basically from the November of 1993 until February 1994, we went from concept to opening and finance in basically four months.”

However, everything was not as effortless as making the decision to be business owners. For a start, there was the fact that even though the Ewodlt brothers were willing to contribute 40 percent by way of their savings toward a business loan, they were rejected by two banks before a third agreed to provide them with the remaining 60 percent via a SBA approved bank loan. When asked whether they did anything differently to garner the loan, Mike Ewoldt said it was the combination of his MBA degree along with a solid background in accounting and finance and his brother’s retail experience that ultimately led to success with the bank.

“You can’t go in and ask a bank for 100 percent financing. Where’s your skin in the game per say? And that’s how people get turned down right away. We kind of operated under the 40-60 rule, if there is such a rule, and sure enough it worked out,” Ewoldt said.

Even then, Ewoldt emphatically argued that opening the doors on the first day was relatively easy compared to the first year of business. Calling it an “eye-opening experience” — and the year that they committed several business gaffes – Ewoldt said there were quite a few challenges in terms of creating a buzz when there was a serious shortage of funds, garnering customer attention and maintaining it, and most of all having faith in the business even as everything was coming apart at the seams.

“Money was coming in but not as fast we needed for it to come in. So, that first year I had stopped taking a paycheck, my wife was supporting us and Jim actually went and worked at a fitness store for the winter. And all we had was that one employee,” Ewoldt said. “On Dec. 23, 1994 — I will never forget this — two days before Christmas, I had watched (our only employee) Jerry make a sale, and I walked out and asked him how much it was and he said $80, and I went back and wrote a check for $75. And so you think, is this really what I want to do?”

Describing this as one of the most critical periods of their business, Mike Ewoldt said it was their sheer belief in the business and continued efforts that eventually paved much of their way to success. “I told the gang in January of 1995 that we needed to do $15,000 of cash. And then I said for February we needed to do like $18,000. Well, when February came around, track season kicked in. And so we got all the coaches and then our business took off. In a matter of two months we were sitting with five bucks in our bank account, and two months later things were rolling finally,” Ewoldt said.

Additionally, the co-founders developed a proven method of improving business by continually organizing races and networking with cross-country coaches, podiatrists and physical therapists. “It’s just not talking about the business, and saying, ‘Hey! Why don’t you try a peak performance shoe?’ You need to extend that to a 15- or 20-minute conversation over dinner sometime. And we have to do a good enough job for customers to act as our marketing team and actually tell others that you gotta go here,” Mike Ewoldt said. He said one of the primary ways Peak Performance retains its edge over competitors is by internalizing the principle of customer relations.

“It doesn’t matter whether we sell shoes, financial tools, or for that matter boats. It doesn’t matter what [the business is about] … at the end of the day, it is about customer relationships,” Ewoldt said.

That — and to keep adapting wherever the track leads.

Nebraska has long lagged behind the rest of the nation when it comes to financing for startup businesses.

More than one ranking has put the state near the bottom — or in some cases at the bottom — in venture capital funding. And other forms of financing such as angel investments and seed capital also can be hard to find.

But that may be changing.

Within the past few months, nearly $60 million in new public and private funds has become available for startup and other small businesses.

Nebraska Global Investment Co. — a venture capital firm that finances the creation and development of software companies in Nebraska – earlier this year closed its fund at $37.3 million, about $7 million more than it hoped for and about $10 million less than it could have raised.

Add to that more than $21 million in federal and state money targeted at startup companies, entrepreneurs and innovation, and you’ve suddenly got a bigger pot.

“It’s a good problem to have,” said Dan Hoffman, executive director of Invest Nebraska. The nonprofit group has a contract with the state to create angel investment funds to match a one-time infusion of $12.6 million from the federal government.

The R&D grants were initiated to help solve specific problems that have been identified by a Nebraska company. The grant applies to areas where no current scientific or technological solution can be found. The intention is to encourage and enable Nebraska faculty members to work directly toward solutions for the industry partner’s existing limitations. Grant funding is to be matched by the industry partner.

To apply for Phase I of the R&D program, a Nebraska company must be a first-time partner with the university member. A partner who has a previous relationship with the university but is planning to work with a new faculty member would also be eligible for a Phase I grant. Maximum cost share for Phase I of the project is $10,000.

Phase II of the R&D program applies to more established partnerships. Eligibility for the Phase II grant depends on a partner submitting at least one grant proposal to a federal agency for further funding, which may be made during the period of the proposed project. The grant applies to any technology-based or scientific research that is anticipated to further the fiscal growth of a company. Submission is open to any Nebraska research university faculty member who is tenured or tenure-leading.

Selection of proposals is competitive. Applicants for the R&D grant should structure their proposals according to National Science Foundation (NSF), Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) guidelines. Proposals also require a budget and approval form from EPSCoR. Proposals are due Jan. 20, 2012.

In 2010, Phase I grants were awarded to the “Self Healing Dental Composites” project, partnered by Dr. Stephen Gross of the Deptartment of Chemistry at Creighton University and Mark Latta of GG Materials Research. Also awarded a Phase I grant was Dr. Gregory Bashford of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering, in partnership with Michael Furtaw of Li-Cor Biosciences, for their project “Experimental study of plasmonic enhanced molecular detection using microfluidic controlled aggregation.”

Phase II awards for 2010 went to the “Improved Detection Technologies for Biologically-Active Contaminants in Water,” partnered by Dr. David Hage, UNL Department of Chemistry; Dr. Daniel Snow, UNL Department of Natural Resources; and Jack Silver of Teledyne Isco.

Nebraska EPSCoR Director Dr. Fred Choobineh

Nebraska EPSCoR Director Dr. Fred Choobineh said, “Scientific and technological collaborations between industry and universities enrich the academic experiences faculty and students while facilitating economic growth.”

Choobineh added that benefits to the university include research leading to direct product development, student experience working on commercial applications, and an increased potential for research publication and improved university facilities. Benefits for Nebraska companies involved in the partnerships would be more cost-effective research, access to university experts, state-of-the-art facilities, student participation, and a direct and efficient transfer of technology from the university to companies.

For more information about EPSCoR, or to find out how to format the proposal for the R&D grants, visit the following websites:

http://epscor.unl.edu/r&d_partnerships.shtml
http://www.eng.nsf.gov/sbir
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/epscor/home/index.html