Since its launch in January 2006, the Utah Fund of Funds has flown under the proverbial radar. But plans for 2009 will change that.

The program, designed to foster entrepreneurship by increasing the amount and diversity of capital available to Utah growth companies, next year will offer several initiatives, including networking events, workshops and industry-specific conferences and other events to increase awareness of its offerings.

"We can't be that helpful to groups if we don't have a network, but we've built that network," said Jeremy Neilson, managing director of the Utah Fund of Funds. "Now that it is sufficiently large, we want to do some outreach and some work on the back side about helping people access what we've built."

The fund is designed to provide access to alternative or nontraditional capital to Utah entrepreneurs. The program does not invest money into any company or individual. Instead, the program invests in venture capital and private equity firms — those located in Utah and out-of-state — that then commit to invest in qualifying companies.

The program was established through $100 million of contingent tax credits, although the Legislature this year boosted the figure to $300 million.

Neilson cautioned that the Fund of Funds "is not for everybody in Utah" because it's structured to help high-growth technology and life-sciences companies. "But we're trying to come up with creative ways to let people know about our products through workshops, small conferences and word-of-mouth," he said.

The program's workshops and conferences will focus on products or topics for entrepreneurs that are not currently offered, especially about fund-raising in the venture-capital and private-equity realms. "We will try to do workshops around the specialized knowledge that we have that other groups in the state don't have," Neilson said.

"The Utah Fund of Funds is an institution to benefit Utah, so if Utahns don't know about it or can't access it, it doesn't seem to make lot of sense to have it here. So we want to make sure Utahns know about it and can use the value of it. We've built it for Utah. We hope that people interested in using it as a free resource reach out and see if we can benefit them."

In addition, the Fund of Funds wants to expand its portfolio of venture-capital and private-equity firms to between 30 and 40 and provide more investments for existing portfolio firms.

As of Oct. 31, the program's 21 portfolio funds, including eight Utah firms, had invested in 32 Utah companies. In total, these companies had received $140 million-plus from those firms and more than $500 million in total investments.

"The market is disrupted, as everybody knows, which allows us to get access to funds we maybe couldn't have gotten access to before," Neilson said. "It also allows funds we have access to generate higher values as companies and marketplaces cause value to decrease and opportunities to arise. So the investing side, we're very excited about."

Details are available at www.utahfundoffunds.com.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com