Monthly Archives: October, 2010

Tim Hoerr Keynote Presenter at EIR Workshop

October 21, 2010

Tim Hoerr, CEO of Serra Ventures, was the keynote presenter at the most recent training workshop at EnterpriseWorks on October 20, 2010. This month’s workshop was titled “Using Outside Providers and Partners to Make Products,” and covered a range of topics including: leveraging outside relationships with OEMs, developing technology via joint development agreements, using sales and distribution channels of much larger organizations, and outsourcing with contract Manufacturers and other partners to bring your products to market. Tim presented five case studies from his actual experience in the high tech arena.

Over the course of the year, the Serra Ventures team hosts several half-day workshops for entrepreneurs and technologists with special emphasis on topics of interest to early stage companies. Tim Hoerr and Dennis Beard of Serra Ventures are two of the four Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs) at EnterpriseWorks, and this training is part of the EIR program to provide workshops on relevant business topics for technology entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses. Tim is the former CEO and co-founder of iCyt. He and Dennis presently work with over a dozen high technology clients located in the UIUC Research Park.

Tim Hoerr Speaks at “The Power of Angel Investing” Workshop at Baylor University

October 5, 2010

Tim Hoerr, CEO of Serra Ventures, LLC, was a featured panelist at the workshop entitled “The Power of Angel Investing.” The event was facilitated by the Angel Capital Association, and marked the 170th time the workshop had been presented by the ACA. The Angel Capital Association is North America’s professional alliance of angel groups. The association brings together many of the angel organizations in the United States and Canada to share best practices and collaboration opportunities. ACA provides excellent professional development and discounts on important services for angel investors who belong to member groups, and also serves as the public policy voice of the American angel community.

Topics that were covered at the presentation included: Angel Basics for Economic Development Professionals, An Overview of Angel Investing, Due Diligence, Starting An Angel Organization, Term Sheets, Trends in Raising Capital and Valuation and Portfolio Strategy.

“The Power of Angel Investing” took place at Baylor University in Waco, TX, and was sponsored by the Baylor Angel Network. Serra Ventures has been a member of the Baylor Angel Network since early 2010, and Tim has served on the Board of the Baylor Technology Entrepreneurship Initiative since late 2008.

Serra Capital I, LP Has First Closing

October 5, 2010

Serra Capital I, L.P. has been formed to provide venture capital to early-stage and emerging technology companies sourced primarily from Illinois, Texas and California by identifying opportunities through the Principals’ extensive relationships with universities, entrepreneurs, centers of influence and investors.  With its headquarters in the University of Illinois Research Park (Champaign, Illinois), the Fund’s objective is to generate higher-than-average, risk-adjusted returns by applying its proprietary investment framework and its mentor/consultative model to companies with innovative technologies.

Serra Capital has identified four specific technology sectors in which it will concentrate: Information Technology and Software, Life Sciences, Clean Technology, and Agriculture Technology.  The first closing for the Serra Capital fund occurred on Friday, October 1, 2010.  Immediately following, Serra Capital made two funding commitments to portfolio companies – Striped Sail, Ltd. and Caterva.

Striped Sail Ltd. has developed a product called the miFrame™ which acts as a stylish stand for the iPad and simultaneously charges it.  The miFrame will be offered to consumers through Apple’s official “Made for iPad®” program.  The Company has plans to introduce multiple accessory products in 2011 and 2012, leveraging the expected success of the miFrame.  Future products may include variations on the hardware/color/basic functionality scheme of the miFrame, as well as entirely different iPad-compatible products.

Caterva was created to develop a real-time social marketing platform.  The web-based software will enable marketers to identify potential new customers and message to them over social network services like Twitter. Caterva’s software technology is based on natural language processing of social media information. Caterva has developed a scalable platform for automatically crawling, classifying, and querying the entire Twitter user base. Additionally this platform has been designed to be extensible to integrate data from Facebook, MySpace, and/or any other social media data source. This allows Caterva to provide instant and targeted customer analysis to brand managers.

Serra Capital will continue to accept investment funding from new limited partners through June of 2011. Serra Capital is managed by Serra Ventures, LLC, with Tim Hoerr and Dennis Beard as principals.