UTAHNS SHINE AT VENTURE-CAPITAL MEET

So what does it take to entice more than 100 venture capitalists into the same hotel at the same time? The 1996 Utah Venture Capital Conference.

Individuals representing all types of investment firms converged on Salt Lake City Feb. 7-8 for the annual event.Now in its 11th year, the conference (and its sponsoring organization, the Wayne Brown Institute) has become recognized as one of the top investment confabs in the country.

This year's meet was held at the Red Lion in Salt Lake City and featured 12 high-growth companies.

Of the 12, 11 are from Utah, and seven of the Utah firms could be classified as high-tech. These organizations include companies manu-facturing/developing everything from modem-telephones and software for the hearing-impaired, to imaging systems for the transportation industry, and smart cabling systems for residential and office use.

In total, these high-tech firms are hoping to raise $10 million to $12 million during the next two years, with the amounts requested ranging between $500,000 and $3.2 million.

According to Brad Bertoch, president of the Wayne Brown Institute, firms participating in past venture capital conferences have directly raised nearly $50 million through their involvement in the conference.

In addition, another $100 million has been raised by past participants after presenting at one or more of the conferences - and that doesn't include dollars raised by going public or being acquired.

The seven Utah firms that I consider high-tech include Provo-based TexSEM Laboratories, Salt Lake City-based ArtNet, Bunnell, FrameRate Labs, Nxi Communications, and PaperWise, and Sandy-based IES Technologies.

A couple of them could end up being quite successful.

Entrepreneurs of the Year

Held in conjunction with the venture capital conference was the annual presentation of the Entrepreneur of the Year award, sponsored by the MountainWest Ven-ture Group, of which I am a board member.

This year's award was presented to the three founders of Megahertz: David Spafford, Kirk Spencer and Stephen Aldous.

The three join such former honorees as Alan Ashton, co-founder of WordPerfect; Roy Noorda, former president and CEO of Novell; Hyrum Smith, co-founder of Frank-lin Quest; and David Evans, co-founder of Evans & Sutherland.