Breakfast with Tom Anyos of Technology Ventures Corporation

A post from 2007 on Tom Anyos and the efforts of Technology Ventures Corporation.

Breakfast with Tom Anyos of Technology Ventures Corporation

Francis and I had a great breakfast yesterday at Hobee’s with Tom Anyos, the director of California operations for Technology Ventures Corporation (TVC). Formed in 1993 by Lockheed Martin to commercialize technology that had been developed at Sandia National Laboratories, TVC expanded its focus to California and Nevada in 2002. The breakfast was to review for a talk I will be giving as a part of “Entering the Entrepreneurial World” in Menlo Park on July 17 and Pleasanton on July 18.

TVC runs an extensive and very professional program focused on entrepreneurial education in Silicon Valley. I blogged about them last October in “Continuing Education in Entrepreneurship” in the hope that more entrepreneurs would take advantage of the opportunities they offered and spend a little more time to “prepare to win.” The July sessions are the first in a series of six monthly events:

1. Entering the Entrepreneurial World
2. Market Research & the Marketing Plan
3. Financial Management
4. Preparing & Presenting the Business Plan
5. Operations Startup, Monitoring & Human Resources
6. The Term Sheet & Lessons Learned

The course is designed to orient the new entrepreneurs to what’s needed to form, plan, finance, manage, and expand a technology-based business. This first session will have three speakers: an experienced entrepreneur (or reasonable facsimile thereof), an attorney who focuses on early stage firms, and a venture capitalist who focuses on early stage firms. The intended audience is an entrepreneur with a technology-based product. The presentations should leave you better equipped to analyze the business and financial potential of a product and to understand the implications early stage legal issues.

In addition to their ongoing educational activities, TVC also works with select entrepreneurial teams to refine their plan and their product, raise funds, and become a going concern. Tom indicated that TVC keeps score on three key factors: attendee feedback and comments from the training sessions, the amount of money raised for their clients, and the number of jobs created. Since 1993 they have helped in the formation of more than 90 businesses, more than 850 million dollars in financing, and the creation of over nine thousand jobs.

But that’s not the best part. This is your tax dollars at work–in that Lockheed Martin is a government contractor–so if your team is accepted as a client, TVC takes no fees or equity participation of any kind, either from entrepreneurs or investors. Come to one of the July sessions if you have time, but plan to attend at least one in the next six months that addresses an area of weakness for your team. Take the time to familiarize yourself with TVC’s approach and talk to one of the members of the TVC California team.

If you would like to submit an executive summary (no confidential or proprietary info please) to TVC you can use the form here.