Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the September 24,
2003 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Mort Collins’ New Venture
One of Princeton’s most prominent venture capitalists,
Mort Collins, has come out of semi-retirement to start a $150 million
venture capital fund focusing on technologies discovered in federal
laboratories. Named Battelle Ventures LP, the fund will develop
research
coming from laboratories managed by the Battelle Memorial Institute,
which is based in Columbus, Ohio. The fund, however, is
headquartered
at Carnegie Center.
A not-for-profit organization, Battelle Memorial Institute employs
16,000 scientists and engineers at about 1,000 companies and 800
government
agencies, including such national laboratories as those at Brookhaven
and Oak Ridge. The varous operations conduct some $2.7 billion in
research and development in about 4,500 projects annually, and they
produce from 50 to 100 patents.
To help him manage the new fund, Collins has enlisted Jim Millar,
Ron Hahn, and Kef Kasdin as partners. Millar had worked with Collins
at DSV Enterprises, Collins’ former venture capital firm. With Hahn,
Millar formed Early Stage Enterprises (ESE) in 1996, and they were
joined by Kasdin. Earlier this month the $44 million ESE fund moved
from the Amboy bank building on Route 518 to the Carnegie Center.
Currently the 8,000-foot office has just six people, including the
four partners, but additional personnel will be hired.
“I have always been stunned by the amount of technology at
Battelle
and the national laboratories it manages, yet almost no commercial
application of these technologies has ever occurred,” says
Collins.
“It’s like being a kid on Christmas morning, to have all of that
to select from and decide what to choose to build companies.”
He will look first for seed, start-up, and first-stage inventions
in the areas of homeland security, life sciences, information
technology,
materials, and energy. The new fund could invest up to $12 million
in a single company over its lifetime.
“Mort Collins is a real local hero who did well in business and
went into venture capital and had a host of success stories,”
says Greg Olsen, founder of Epitaxx and Sensors Unlimited. “He
did a lot of due diligence and the vast majority of his deals got
him a return.”
Collins, 67, has a chemical engineering degree from the University
of Delaware and a PhD from Princeton. he founded Data Science Ventures
(DSV Partners) in 1968 and helped start such companies as Tandem
Computers,
the Liposome Company, Transwitch Corporation, Epitaxx (now JDS
Uniphase)
and PD-LD in Pennington. He chaired President Reagan’s task force
on innovation and entrepreneurship, served as technology policy
advisor
to President George H.W. Bush, and is a former chairman of the
National
Venture Capital Association.
Hahn grew up in California, the son of a single working mother,
and went to Occidental College, Class of ’66, then earned a finance
MBA from UCLA. After working as an investment banker, he began doing
venture capital in 1974 and joined Commodities Corporation in 1976.
He founded Princeton/Montrose Partners of Poor Farm Road and worked
at a large venture capital firm and merchant bank before joining
Millar
at ESE. Millar, one of eight children, grew up in Philadelphia and
South Jersey, where his father was a mechanical engineer and his
mother
was an entrepreneur. After Yale, Class of 1980, he worked as a design
engineer for Texas Instruments, then earned his Wharton MBA and joined
DSV Partners in 1985. He is married to a pediatrician, and they have
four children.
Kasdin is a Princeton University alumna who made her mark at 3Com
Corporation in Santa Clara, California, most recently driving key
strategic and operational initiatives. When she moved to New Jersey
she consulted to the Sarnoff Corporation to identify spinoff
opportunities
and future investment opportunities. She became a partner at ESE in
2000.
As they make new investments for Battelle, the ESE partners will
continue
to manage their ESE investments with 11 active companies. Says Hahn:
“It’s very exciting. It’s a great time to be investing in early
stage companies. The values are very good, and Battelle is a premiere
research organization.”
— Barbara Fox
Battelle Ventures LP, 103 Carnegie Center, Suite200, Princeton 089540. 609-921-8896; fax, 609-921-8703. Home page:www.battelleventures.comTop Of PageSimX SoftwareSimX arrived in America as just an idea. The germ ofthe company, which develops software to make programming tasks vastlyquicker and easier, traveled from Moscow to East Windsor with VladBernstein some 12 years ago.Bernstein had been an engineer with the Central Heat Energy Institutein Moscow, an agency from which he also received his Ph.D. Workingon energy power plants, his idea for software that nearly anyone coulduse — with little training — for complex tasks had taken hold.Yet he believed he would have little chance of developing andmarketingsuch a product in Russia.”The Soviet system was not acceptable for me, and I was notacceptablefor it,” he says. “I had this idea, and I started developingit in Russia, but I saw no future for it there.”Bernstein chose to set up shop in the Princeton pretty much at random,he says. He knew little of the United States, but had seen PrincetonUniversity. “I was amazed, absolutely,” he says of hisimpressionof that institution.Employment was the driving force behind his choice of a new home.He found a job — actually substantial consulting work — atCNA Insurance, which has seen been acquired a number of times. Moneyfrom consulting work has fueled the development of SIMX products.”We are self-funded,” says Bernstein, who runs the companyalong with his partner, Andrei Afanassenkov, with whom he had workedin Moscow. Their company, which has its offices at 510 Route 130,has eight employees — seven software developers, and one salesand marketing person. Bernstein’s wife, Olga, is the accountant, andtheir son, Nikita, age 25, is an employee. Another son, Anthony, isentering his senior year at Hightstown High School.There has been no culture shock in the Bernstein family, says thepaterfamilas. No teen-age rebellion, American style. “Somehowwe have kept Russian culture in the family,” he says.While there have been no shockwaves at home, Bernstein is countingon creating shockwaves with his family of products, called Target2.0. The first of which, Report Manager Light, has just gone on sale,and can be downloaded for a free trial at his company’s website,www.simx.com.“It’s called `target,’” says Bernstein, “because we arechanging the audience for software development.” It now takessubstantial training, and equally substantial patience, to createsoftware for a specific purpose, whether that be making charts fromreams of raw data or putting up a website to wow potential customers— and make it easy to buy.SimX’s family of products is being developed with an eye towardcuttingprogramming tasks down to a size that will be embraced by people withexpertise in their chosen professions, but little familiarity withprogramming. The idea, says Bernstein, is to take people who knowtheir business and to “let them do what they need right away,very easily.” His products, he says, “reduces the requirementsfor developers dramatically.”His software can be customized and running, he says, “within afew hours.”Examples of SimX software at work abound at the company’s website,and they are amazing. There is a link to a website designed by artistVladimir Aituganov after only two hours of training. Front and centeris a bracelet with violet orbs at each side. Hold a cursor on thebracelet and it revolves completely in every direction. The site alsoincludes a sort of slide show. Thumbnail prints of pen and inkdrawingssit in a row off to the left. Click on any one, and it comes to life,in an easy-to-scrutinize size, in the center of the screen. Thebeautifully-designedwebsite is clean, professional, and full of well-organized sections,which provide information on everything from the artist’s life tobooks and articles he has written.One example of the work that can be done with SimX’s software is hardto pull away from. Using its database access capability, SimX hascreated a gallery of 3-D objects that are ready to be included inwebsites. Pull-down menus lead to an extensive collection of objects,all of which are just waiting to be spun around and around. Startspinning the taxi cabs and rotating the salamanders and it is hardto move on to a more productive task.On the more professional side, the website includes examples ofsoftwarea designer used to build “a complex, mathematically intenseapplication”in just two days. There is also a quality assurance databaseapplicationthat was put together in three days. All of these times, assuresBernstein,are a tiny fraction of the standard software development timeline.Is anyone else doing what SimX does? The answer is sort of. No oneis doing exactly what SimX is doing, and no one is within a coupleof years of catching up with all of the functionality in its softwarepackages, says Bernstein.Given this lead, Bernstein says that Simx’s end is clear. The companywill be purchased, he says. No suitor is yet on the radar, butBernstein,who has made the transition to capitalism in just over a decade, sayshe is confident that one will appear as soon as the company buildsa market for its products.— Kathleen McGinn SpringSimX Corporation, 510 Route 130, Suite 15, EastWindsor 08520. Vladimir Bernstein, software engineer. 609-371-8495;fax, 609-371-5324. E-mail: nikita@simx.com. Home page:www.simx.comTop Of PageLeaving TownMcLean Engineering, 2 Applegate Drive, Robbinsville08691.A 50-year old manufacturing operation has shut down, putting 160peopleout of work, the victim of a corporate buyout gone sour.McLean Engineering manufactured fans and blowers for thetelecommunicationsindustry at 70 Washington Road in Princeton Junction before itexpandedto Robbinsville.The firm was bought in the 1997-1998 time period by Minnesota basedApplied Power, a public firm. In December, 2002, Applied Power splitinto Actuant Corporation, which is publicly traded, and APW Ltd.,a private firm which kept the McLean brand, according to an APWspokespersonwho asked not to be named.Early this year APW began to close McLean and though it posted therequired announcement with the state labor department, almost nonoticewas taken of the closing until former employees began to show up onjob wanted lists.”I can’t say why it closed, but it closed,” says thespokesperson.”I can’t say where the manufacturing is being done, but it isbeing done. Obviously we don’t enjoy closing facilities.”Top Of PageContracts AwardedRCN Corporation (RCNC), 105 Carnegie Center,Princeton08540. David C. McCourt, chairman and CEO. 609-734-3700; fax,609-734-4586.Home page: www.rcn.comRCN has a joint venture with Pepco Communications to providefiberopticand video services to Georgetown University. To be called StarpowerCommunications, the joint venture will provide a broadband networklinking the campus with other locations,Top Of PageCrosstown MovesLewis Kassel Photography, 35 East Broad Street,Hopewell 08525. 609-466-0267; fax, 609-466-0328. Home page:www.lewiskassel.comLewis Kassel moved his photography from a commercial space at 17SeminaryAvenue, a building that he owns, to his own large home. “I turnedthe whole building into an investment property,” he says.Kassel does event and portrait photography with what he terms “acandid photojournalistic bent,” and most of the work is done atclient sites.Laser Energetics Inc., 3535 Quakerbridge Road,Suite 601, Mercerville 08619. Robert D. Battis, founder, presidentand CEO. 609-587-8250; fax, 609-587-9315. Home page:www.laserenergetics.comLaser Energetics moved from 4044 Quakerbridge Road to a temporaryspace, 8,000 square feet at 3535 Quakerbridge Road, where it has 12employees. It plans to expand to a new space this fall.The company builds alexandrite lasers and laser systems forindustrial,military, scientific and medical applications.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
