My friend, Pang, and I showing off our donor bandages.

I have written about ARUP Blood Services numerous times as this is my favorite volunteer experience.  You can read some of my previous posts here, here and here.  I will put in yet another plug, though, that they are always looking for blood and platelet donors as they are the sole providers for many of the local hospitals (including Huntsman Cancer Institute).  You can get more information from their site.

The University Venture Fund is another great organization, a student ran venture capital firm with $18m to invest.  (You can read a previous post of mine here.) If you are a student based in Utah, this is an excellent opportunity and I would greatly urge you to get involved.  If you are an investor, consider partnering with this group.  They provide free due diligence with the hopes of piggy-backing on investments.

Have any of you readers volunteered this week?  If so, with what organizations?

My good friend Melissa Lipani has started her own full service pet care business, Woof! SLC, where she offers services ranging from Walks, Pet Sitting, Pet Taxi, Bathing, Yard Cleanup, etc. within the Sugarhouse (and surrounding 5 miles) area.

Melissa has three pit bulls of her own, one of which she has nurtured back to good health from his battle with an auto-immune disease.  She contributes numerous hours of volunteer work with No More Homeless Pets and Best Friends, being a constant representative for animal rights and adoptions.  I highly recommend her for your beloved pet’s needs.

For further information, visit her site and blog or call her at 801-419-2464.

Back in 2007 I created a list of private equity investors in Utah.  Over the past couple years this list has shifted, making an updated list necessary.

Angels

Angel investors provide the initial capital to a start-up, investing amounts usually up to $1m in exchange for common stock.

• Olympus Angels
  
• Utah Angels
• Top of Utah Angels / Grow Utah
  
• Salt Lake Life Science Angels
• Park City Angels
• Southern Utah Dixie Angels
• Kickstart

Venture Capital

Venture capitalists provide early-stage and growth capital, typically investing in industries such as information technology, clean technology, and life sciences.

• EPIC Ventures
• vSpring Capital
  
• UV Partners
  
• Canopy Ventures
• Peterson Ventures
• Prospector Equity Capital
• Double Eagle Ventures (Gary Kennedy)
  
• EsNet Group
• University Venture Fund
  
• Peer Ventures
• Vast Equity

Private Equity

The term private equity can be used for any investor that invests in non-public companies, but usually is in reference to investors that focus on non-public companies with revenues.  Below are the late stage and buy-out firms in Utah. The late stage firms finance companies that are already cash flow positive and need financing for expansion or an additional round before a liquidation. The buy-out firms actually buy a company, finding a new management team (or personally managing the company themselves) to turn the business towards profitability.

• Sorenson Capital
• Peterson Partners
• Cross Creek Capital
  
• DW Healthcare Partners
• Banyan Ventures
• Dolphin Capital
• Mercato
• Leucadia
• Huntsman Gay Global Capital

Venture Lenders

Venture lenders provide a financing option that extends the capital between equity rounds. It is a debt plus warrant structure, preserving the equity of the company but providing potential upside for the lender.

• UTFC / Innovations Venture
  
• Zions Bank Venture Lending

Am I missing any investors?  If so, please comment or email me.

The University Venture Fund is a student ran venture capital firm that has raised $18m from outside limited partners and has a current portfolio of 17 investments.  The organization has partnered with numerous private equity partners, providing free due diligence in return for the real life due diligence experience.  In return, the private equity firms often carve out an investment piece, allowing UVF to piggyback if interested.  All investments are decided by the students, but must be approved by their investment committee, compromised of local private equity investors.

My volunteer work with UVF consists of document review, ensuring that all research points are considered during the due diligence process, and providing additional insight into the role of a VC analyst.

If you are a student at the University of Utah, BYU, or Utah State University, and are interested in venture capital (no matter your field of study) I would urge you to get involved with this organization.

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, with one out of 5 men and women seriously considering taking his/her life.  In the past, economic recessions have increased this count, a result being seen again in today’s economic environment.

Yukio Shige, a retired policeman, has spent the last 5 years patrolling the Tojinbo cliffs, a place where many desperate folks come to commit suicide by jumping the 82 feet into the Sea of Japan.  Since 2004 he has roamed the cliffs 2 or 3 times a day in hopes of finding these people in need, trying to dissuade them from the act.  When successful, he takes them back to his counseling office, offers them tea, listens to their troubles, and then proceeds to help them resolve the issues including personally going with them to confront people.  He has been funding his work through donations and his retirement funds, saving over 180 lives to date.

Inspirational!

What can we do to help others in these rough economic waters?  Many of us obviously do not have the time or money to make an impact like Shige, but we definitely can do smaller acts. How about freely opening up the rolodex to make an introduction for a job seeking friend?  Perhaps take time to visit with someone over lunch?  Volunteer to help those in greater need? Try to better understand the depression others could be feeling and the best ways to respond? Inquire how you can be of assistance?

What are your thoughts?

To be honest, it ended up being a weird volunteer experience for personal reasons irrelevant to this blog.  However, I still wanted to briefly highlight KCPW as I truly enjoy their news coverage, have volunteered with them numerous times, and donated many times in the past.

KCPW, acquired by Wasatch Media last year, is a public radio station serving the Salt Lake Metropolitan and is supported mainly by donations.  They provide an excellent line-up of programs, with my top favorites being the BBC, Morning Edition, and (of course) Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. =)  

They have a website, handful of blogs, twitter presence, and radio coverage at the frequencies of 88.3 and 105.3.  If interested in volunteering, fill out this form and they will get in touch with upcoming activities.

• Lack of Liquidity –  One of the biggest issues is the current lack of liquidity. The venture capitalists’ job is to create a hopefully good return for their investors, with returns coming through such liquidation events as a merger, acquisition, or an initial public offering.  For over the past year the public markets have essentially been frozen with the National Venture Capital Association actually proclaiming a “Capital Market Crisis“.  As a result, there has been mention of an emerging secondary market for private stock.  Thankfully, though, within this last quarter a handful of companies have gone public (I am not sure the total since the data is not yet out, but I want to say at least 2 or 3 companies with Open Table being the first).
• Difficult Fundraising Environment – Limited Partners have halted or stepped back from venture due to huge hits on their public investments, sometimes resulting in their portfolios experiencing the denominator effect.  The combination of lack of liquidity and LPs holding their money close while the market stabilizes has resulted in fundraising being extremely difficult for anyone except top tier funds.
• Smaller Fund Sizes - Venture firms have reacted to this rigid environment by raising smaller funds.
• Some Changes in the Venture Players - There have been some VCs who have closed shop, but there are also new entrants (i.e. Javelin and Founder Collective).
• Innovators Continue to Innovate – The innovators keep creating, as they should.  There are positives to this economic environment (for example lack of competition) as long as start-ups realize that funding is still out there, though perhaps a bit harder to find.  If anything, this type of environment creates entrepreneurs that are wise and efficient with the capital raised.

While reading the private equity news the other day, I saw a link to an interview with Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper.  Nothing about the interview was too profound, but I enjoyed seeing these VC titans talking about the same trends I was seeing.  I must admit that my favorite part was when Tim and Steve were continually questioned about different “important” financial and numbers, none of which relevant to the venture capital realm or these two investors.

Unfortunately I could not embed the video directly, but the above image is linked to the video feed.

When he wrote that post I was intrigued to look further in the Southwest region, the main investment region for EPIC Ventures.  I had looked out of personal interest right after Q1, but had not taken the time to post up on my blog.  But with Q2 near completion, I thought I would post this information and follow up with Q2 analysis when the numbers were released later this month.

I used the same data as Fred and also annualized Q1 of 2009, creating similar charts but with the addition of the SouthWest region. (Note that MoneyTree Report defines the Southwest as Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.  EPIC does invest out of this region but our offices are located in Utah and New Mexico and we do like to invest close to home.)

My percentage change in capital investment did quibble slightly with Fred’s data in the sense that I found the percentage drops to be a bit larger in each area. I believe the difference in our data is due to Fred using more estimations and I using exact calculations. (And if anyone is incorrect, it would be me.=))  I show that there were some fairly significant drops in each region: 57% in Silicon Valley, 54% in New England and 31% in New York.  But interestingly, the biggest drop (out of the four charted above) was in the Southwest.  Though it looks minimal on the chart, investments dropped from $471m in 2008 to an $160m estimate in 2009, creating a 66% decrease.

The deal flow saw a decrease, but not as significant as the capital invested.  For instance looking at the decline of 2009 by the average number (not the 2008 only number which was used for the above capital percentage change), NY Metro was down by 13%.  A notable drop, but not nearly as much as capital invested.  Still the SouthWest region saw the largest decrease out of the four charted groups.

With Q2 numbers due in the near future, I am going to wait to opine on reasonings for this significant regional decline. However, feel free to post any thoughts or opinions in the mean time.

Utah Blood (also known as ARUP Blood Services) is the sole provider of  blood to Huntsman Cancer, Primary Children’s Hospital, Shriner’s Hospital for Children and University of Utah Hospital and Clinics.  These four (out of the total of 43) Utah hospitals represent 25% of the needed blood in Utah with any donations made directly helping someone within the SLC community.

Utah Blood is constantly trying to expand their platelet donor base as they need 25 people a day to fulfill the platelet needs within these four hospitals.  A platelet donation can be a bit more time consuming than a blood donation, taking anywhere from 80 minutes to 2 hours, but donors are constantly needed due to the short shelf life, a mere 5 days, of platelets.

For more information visit their site, subscribe to their Blood Blog, join their Facebook page or follow their twitter stream.  Or to make an appointment at their Research Park or Murray location, call 801-584-5272.