Smart Women Think Before Buying Latte
Launching the Next High- Tech Business
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Kathleen McGinn Spring and Bart Jackson were prepared for the June 5, 2002 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
PPPL Celebrates 50 Years
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory was scheduled
to celebrate its 50th anniversary last September 12. The event was
postponed and takes place from Wednesday through Friday, June 5 through
7, at PPPL’s Lyman Spitzer Building, beginning with registration at
8 a.m. on June 5. Cost: $50. To register, call Dolores Lawson
at 609-243-5554.
Founded in 1951 by Lyman Spitzer, professor of astronomy at
Princeton University, who had been involved in the study of very hot
rarefied gases in interstellar science, PPPL is a collaborative national
center for fusion energy and plasma physics research. It is managed
by Princeton University at its Forrestal Campus for the U.S. Department
of Energy. Fusion energy and plasma physics research is PPPL’s primary
mission. An auxiliary mission is providing education in fusion energy,
plasma physics, and related technologies.
The anniversary celebration begins with welcoming remarks by Anne
Davies, associate director for Fusion Energy Sciences, U.S. Department
of Energy; and Robert Goldston, director of the Plasma Physics
Lab. Among the speakers on June 5 are Richard Hawryluk, deputy
director of PPPL, speaking on “Plasma Science Research at PPPL;”
James Drake, University of Maryland, speaking on “Magnetic
Reconnection;” Karl Lackner, European Fusion Development
Agreement, speaking on “Plasma Boundary;” John Bahcall,
Institute for Advanced Study, speaking on “Solar Fusion and Solar
Neutrinos;” and Miklos Porkolab, director of the Plasma
Science and Fusion Center at MIT, speaking on “Waves in High Temperature
Plasmas: A Perspective on 50 Years of Science and the Promise of Applications.”
Speaking at a banquet at 6:30 p.m. is Raymond Orbach, Department
of Energy; and William Happer, chair of the Princeton University
Research Board.
Speakers on the second day include Jeremy Goodman, Princeton
University, speaking on “Unsolved Plasma Problems in Astrophysics;”
Robert Rosner, Enrico Fermi Institute, speaking on “Solar
Physics;” Daniel Dubin, University of California at San
Diego, speaking on “Basic Plasma Physics with Trapped Nonneutral
Plasmas;” Jill Dahlberg, director, Division of Inertial
Fusion Technology, General Atomics, speaking on “IFE: Where It
Came From, Where It Is Going,” and William Tang, chief scientist
at the PPPL, speaking on “Accomplishments and Challenges in Computational
Plasma Science.” At 5 p.m., there will be a tour of PPPL.
On the final day, which ends after concluding remarks at noon, speakers
include William Heidbrink, University of California, Irvine,
speaking on “Energetic Particles;” Friedrich Wagner,
Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, speaking on “Wendelstein
Stellarators,” and PPPL Director Goldston, speaking on “Future
Directions in Plasma Science and Fusion Research.”
Top Of PageSmart Women Think Before Buying Latte
Liz Scafa is a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley
who works with women investors to help them set and achieve their
financial goals. This is a natural extension of her life’s work. In
her eighth grade yearbook, Scafa stated her career objective to become
a CPA. With a BBA from Baruch College of the City University of New
York in 1982, Scafa started in Big 8 accounting at Touche Ross & Co.
(now Deloitte & Touche), moved to Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche
Bank) and then to CNA Insurance Company.
Since she joined Morgan Stanley three years ago, her work has been
more in line with her own changing goals — to work with individuals
and small businesses. “There is more of a personal reward in dealing
with individuals,” she observes. “I help them to develop a
written financial plan including what they need to do to achieve their
goals.”
Scafa focuses on the financial status of women today. According to
David Bach, author of “Smart Women Finish Rich,” Broadway
Books, 1999, the picture for women is mixed. On the one hand, women
own 9.2 million businesses; head 42 percent of households with assets
over $600,000; earn about $1 trillion a year; and women investors
outperformed their male counterparts in investment returns in 9 of
the last 12 years.
Yet women generally live seven years longer than men, requiring more
savings; 25 percent of widows go through their husbands’ death benefits
in two months; one in two marriages ends in divorce; and women average
11 1/2 years out of the labor force to raise families, according to
Bach.
Consequently, the need for women to understand their financial situation
and plan for the future is more critical today than ever. Scafa specializes
in helping women to do just that. On Thursday, June 6, from 5:30 to
7 p.m. at Borders Book Store in Nassau Park, Scafa speaks on “Smart
Women Finish Rich,” based on that New York Times best selling
book by David Bach. The event is sponsored by NJAWBO. Call 609-924-7975
for more information.
Scafa draws on her 20 years of financial services experience to present
women with ideas for managing their assets and offers this advice
to all women: “Document objectives, establish a plan, monitor
progress, and look forward to the future.”
Drawing on Bach’s book, Scafa offers women seven ideas for managing
their assets:
Learn to earn. Scafa advises women to commit themselvesto learning “one thing about money” every year, for example,by taking a class or reading a book on investment.Put your money where your values are. “Do things thatmake a difference,” she advises, but make sure that values andfinancial goals complement each other. “For example, if you wantto benefit homeless children,” says Scafa, “don’t get a jobwhere you have to work 90 hours a week, and don’t have time for volunteerwork.”Figure out where you stand financially. “People don’tknow where their money is,” observes Scafa. Her advice to women:”Take a financial inventory so that you understand where youraccounts are maintained and who the beneficiaries are on your IRAaccounts.” In divorce situations, this can be critical, becausebeneficiary designations overrule instructions in a will.Build your retirement basket. Women should try to fundtheir own retirements. “While you are working,” says Scafa,”pay yourself first.” Women need to put away 12 percent ofgross earnings for retirement versus only 10 percent for men due totheir time out of the work force and the fact that they die later.To maintain financial control, she recommends that women consolidatetheir retirement accounts, moving their accounts with them when theychange jobs.Use the power of the latte factor. People tend to throwaway money on a daily basis. Think of all those innocent-looking doublenonfat lattes. By building a designer coffee stop into the pre-workroutine, and hitting the office vending machine in the afternoon fora couple of diet sodas and maybe a power bar, a gal can easily spendas much as $10 a business day, which adds up to $2,520 a year and,taking into account investment potential, $1,354,000 in 42 years.Build your security basket. For a secure future, saysScafa, “make sure you have a will or a living trust, enough moneyin an accessible emergency fund, and proper insurance, including life,health, disability, and long-term care.Build your dream. Make financial decisions with specificgoals in mind. “For example, if you want to take a trip in twoyears or less,” says Scafa, “certain investments are appropriate— nothing too aggressive or you might risk losing the principal.”For investment goals of two to five years, appropriate investmentsare T-bills, bonds, and bond funds as opposed to money markets andCDs, she advises. For the three to ten-year horizon, individual stocksand mutual funds are appropriate; they are riskier yet offer greaterpromise of more reward.Drawing on her 20 years of experience in corporations, Scafasummarizes, “Keep an emergency balance in case you need it; makesure you know where your assets are; and plan for the future.”Top Of PageLaunching the Next High- Tech BusinessIt just isn’t the same. A business whose entire productconsists of a twitching magnetic screen or power chip faces an entirelydifferent set of start up challenges than the inventor of new farmplow. Not necessarily harder or easier, just different.Entrepreneurs and high-tech firms seeking to expand can discover exactlyaround which corners these unique challenges lie at the seminar “Launchingand Financing a Technology-Based Business in New Jersey” on Wednesday,June 12, at 9:30 a.m. at the Garden State Exhibition Center in Somerset.Speakers include Randy Harmon of the N.J. Small Business DevelopmentCenter (SBDR); funding and financial expert Jim Gunton of theNew Jersey Chamber; and attorneys Debra Dorfman, RichardMattessich and Louis Sapirman from the College Road law firmof Hale & Dorr, specialists in IP and cyberlaw. The panelists willcover initial capitalization, planning, labor agreements, growth,and all issues specific to both high tech and E-businesses. Sponsorsare the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the SBDR.This seminar is one of 20 such workshops included in the New JerseyTechnology Showcase, which will take over the Garden State ExhibitionCenter from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., on June 12 and 13. Entrance is complimentary,to register visit www.goitec.com The New Jersey Technology Councilofficially hosts this event, which is organized by trade show companyITEC, and sponsored by Gateway, Intel, Microsoft, and other majorcomputer players.”The real problem most high-tech entrepreneurs face,” notesHarmon, “is that they enter business with a Field of Dreams attitude.They truly believe that all they have to do is make it and the customerswill come. I hate to shatter dreams,” he adds, “but it justain’t necessarily so.”Harmon, who grew up in Spring Valley, New York, graduated from Cornellwith a degree in industrial labor relations. After gaining a RutgersMBA, Harmon moved from student to staff when he joined the Small BusinessDevelopment Center, where he now acts as Director of Technology Commercialization.High technology enterprises, in which Harmon includes both life scienceand E-business, must have a foot in both the traditional and the innovativecamps. They must adhere to the basic business startup rules, yet bythe very nature of their product and markets, they must remain a littlemore innovative and flexible.Overlapping startup tracks. Seldom does the new high techproduct dawn upon a clientele familiar with its use. More probablyit comes rapidly apace among a host of other swiftly changing technologies,each more complicated to use and explain. Of necessity, the end producttends to be confusing. Yet a confused customer will not buy.For this reason, Harmon says, the old models, which traditionallyoutline product development, then marketing plans, followed by businessdevelopment and funding, just don’t apply. “From the first glimmerof invention, through the written concept right up through manufacturing,”he explains, “the entrepreneur must be making simultaneous checkswith the marketplace.” In some ways, such testing and producttweaking is easier for the highly technical product. With a higherspeed of creation, more variations can be built into, say, a softwarepackage within a given time frame.Nearly simultaneously with the production and marketing tracks, businessdevelopment funds can be sought with a rough prototype and promisesof market-based refinements. Frequently investors will appreciatethe entrepreneur’s customer sensitivity as much as the actual viabilityof the product. The one caveat here is not letting one’s inventiveenthusiasm rush to capital sources with a half-baked idea.Layers of expertise. Although most scientists or technicalinventors truly believe they have the full range of business acumento manage a growing company, alas, very few do. While the inventingentrepreneur is busy honing her new product, she would also be wiseto surround herself with expert teams to handle marketing and sales,plan writing and finance, and even human resources (it’s never tooearly). Not only do specialized teams impart the obvious advantageof top business performance, Harmon points out, but they aid in overlappingthe various startup tracks. If one group is already lining up initialcustomers, the other group simultaneously seeking funding will havean easier time impressing potential investors.Another element by no means inherent in every entrepreneur is executiveability. As growth occurs, many founders are loathe to bring in anew CEO for fear of loosing “my company.” During funding negotiations,though, the smart entrepreneur may want to consider ceding day-to-daymanagement responsibilities to a seasoned CEO, and name himself Chairmanand Chief Technical Officer. This is a way to retain control whilebringing in expert executives to run and grow the business.Intellectual property. The laws concerning who owns whatfor how long are changing faster than Nintendo gameware. “Herehigh tech firms face an absolutely unique situation,” insistsHarmon. “The manufacture and sale of innovative ideas across thecomputer screen is something that we haven’t legally figured out yet.”A host of protections do exist, yet without specialized legal counsel,one can just as easily (and unintentionally) find oneself judged victimizeras victim.Labor caveats. In this ever-shifting labor market, skilledtechnical and E-business workers have proved themselves the most freneticallyfickle of all. The high tech hirer must develop a scenario of sufficientbenefit to keep personnel. Even if this doesn’t worry you, it willworry your funders. Also, within house, the technical employer mustdevelop a fair but firm non-compete agreement. “You don’t wantto hold out a chain that will frighten prospective employees,”says Harmon, “but you don’t want to give away the crown jewelswhen a worker walks out the door either.”The money search. Given the recent history of E-businessnosedives, few investors are beating the bushes for gleaming-eyedtechies with new ideas. “Currently,” laughs Harmon, “venturecapitalists are a bunch of atheists with precious little faith, whoseek proof every step of the way.”Harmon’s first advice is for the starting entrepreneur to have enoughskin in the game. Gone are the days when your brain, smile, and sweatequity are going to win you investors or buy you a percentage. Funderswant to see your mortgaged home on the line.Yet high tech funding has not gone entirely underground. Harmon insistsit’s all a matter of knocking on the right door. The New Jersey TechnologyCouncil’s Venture Fund continues to bring scores of entrepreneurialand investor hands together every year. On the federal level, Harmonsays the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) is theclosest thing to free money the tech entrepreneur can hope for. Thisfederal agency holds under its aegis the departments of Defense, Agriculture,Health, NSF, and all bureaus seeking advanced technologies. They spendover $1.3 billion annually to launch businesses in two phase loans.Proof of concept can net the start-up firm a maximum of $100,000 forsix months, which may be followed by $750,000 for a two-year period.And best of all, serious startup firms have a one-in-eight changeof receiving an award.In short, the money, along with success, do indeed lie out there forthe business launching a highly technical product. “And it’s allright to keep your heart in the Field of Dreams,” admits Harmon.”Just make sure you also have your eyes fixed just as avidly onsales and profits.”— Bart JacksonNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
