2003 

Investment Funds Through The E-Zone

The Madison E-Zone, Northern Kentucky’s Innovation and Commercialization Center, located in Covington, is the starting point for technology companies interested obtaining investment funding of all types.  One source of this funding is Kentucky’s Commercialization Investment Fund (CIF).  The CIF is a series of investment funds aimed at promoting and developing early stage technology companies in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

There are four funds within CIF:  The Rural Innovation Fund, The R&D Voucher Fund, the Kentucky Commercialization Fund and the ICC Concept Pool Fund.  A brief description and links to the guidelines and applications of each of the funds can be found at http://tig.kstc.com/Relation/downloadFile.cfm?DocNum=7.

The application process for these funds was designed to emulate the venture capital due diligence process.  Applicants must step through three screens of increasingly more detailed analysis before an investment decision is made. The heart of the due diligence process is a technical and business analysis and detailed business plan. The intent is to invest in those companies that have the greatest probability of successfully commercializing a technology and capturing a significant market share.

Two E-Zone assisted companies have recently been awarded these investment funds – Global Project Design (GPD) and People Strategy.

GPD is located in the E-Zone and was recently awarded an ICC Concept Pool Fund grant in the amount of $25,000.  GPD provides powerful design and risk management solutions for complex projects. GPD's unique tools are an industry breakthrough, combining visual ease-of-use and advanced simulation.  The award allowed GPD to work with clients to prototype a new internet-based tool for monitoring dynamic, distributed projects linked to GPD's existing tools.

This has been a very good quarter for this E-Zone resident.  GPD has signed two new channel agreements, contracts with three new Fortune 50 businesses and an agreement with the Kentucky Department of Transportation.  GPD will be assisting these organizations with complex projects in ACE (Architecture, Construction and Engineering), Telecom, and Aerospace.  In addition, GPD's innovative partnership with University of Connecticut was recognized with the best paper award at the 2003 International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Taipei, Taiwan.

In 2003, People Strategy has been the recipient of two CIF awards.  PeopleStrategy provides affordable and flexible human resource (HR) solutions that help customers focus on profitable growth, decrease operating costs, and increase employee satisfaction by simplifying and outsourcing transactional people management tasks.  The Company's services are grounded on Web-based technologies.

Earlier this year People Strategy received an ICC Concept Pool Fund grant in the amount of $25,000.   PeopleStrategy used the funds to create an advanced online learning system that allowed People Strategy to provide its customers with convenient, real-time access to practical, self-paced education and training materials which is central to PeopleStrategy’s “affordable-flexible-simple” value proposition.  (This online learning system was developed by an E-Zone graduate – Tier 1 Performance Solutions.)

Recently, People Strategy was awarded a R&D Voucher Award.  While the project details are still under development, this award will be used to fund a joint project with NKU’s Department of Information Systems’ faculty and students.  The work for this project will take place at a lab being set up at the Madison E-Zone.

Congratulations to the award winners and if you are interested in more information, please call me at 859-292-7781 or write me at cbarach@madisone-zone.com.