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Name: Doug Lyon, Chairman, Computer Engineering
Affiliation: Fairfield University
E-Mail: dlyon@fairfield.edu
Telephone: 2032544000x3155
What Makes a Technology Venture Successful? ─ Insights and Advice from a Panel of Serial Entrepreneurs
Date: Monday, March 12, 2012
Location: Alumni House, Fairfield University,1073 North Benson Road, Fairfield, CT 06430 
Time: 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm 
Registration and Networking and Refreshments from 4:00 pm to 4:45 pm 
Program from 4:45 pm to 6:40 pm 
Wine Reception from 6:40 pm  

Primary Sponsor: 	Fairfield University School of Engineering

Fee: $20 if pre-registered, $30 if not pre-registered by cash or check at the door
If you pre-register and later need to cancel, please let us know at least 24 hours in advance: e-mail to manny@ratafias.com or call 203-387-7348

A Ratafia Ventures Event
The presenters are:
        Bob Lerman – Thermodynetics/Turbotec Products, & Mystic Technology Partners
         Bob Molloy – CyberResearch, CyberChrome, Dynatron, & Parametrics
         Scott Nevins – Bernstein, E-Tran, Protegrity, GiantBear, & ClientSoft
         Dick Resch – Cannondale, EMPower, DeltaGlide, & Motiv Technology
        Nick Shkolnik – GEN3, EnGen, & LiquidPiston
        Matt Smith – CompreMedx, Kramex, Medical Sterilization, & HelpMate Robotics
Robert A. Lerman
Bob Lerman has 40 years of investment, financing and industrial experience He has been CEO of Thermodynetics since 2003 and was President and a Director since 1981. Through its Turbotec Products, Plc holding, quoted on the AIM market in London, Thermodynetics manufactures high performance heat exchangers, fabricated metal components and flexible connector products for heat transfer and transportation applications. Thermodynetics is currently seeking investment opportunities.
Over the years, Bob co-founded a number of venture capital companies of which he has been the principal investing officer and director.  
Bob has recently been named CEO of Mystic Technology Partners, an advanced materials nanotechnology venture, established in 2010. 
Bob also serves as adviser, director or consultant for other companies, none of which compete with Thermodynetics.
Bob Lerman holds a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering: from College of the City of New York, an MS in Mathematics: from Adelphi College, and an MS in Electrical Engineering: from University of Connecticut. 
Robert Molloy 
Robert Molloy is President and Founder of CyberResearch. For the past 25 years, CyberResearch has built advanced industrial computers and display systems used by Fortune 500 companies, universities, government, and military worldwide.  Today, the company specializes in developing custom turn-key data acquisition systems for use in the nuclear power industry and severe environment display solutions for use in outdoor digital signage.  

Bob says "You can always tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs." Some of the technologies Bob pioneered include: the use of solid state variable frequency inverters to replace electromechanical variable speed drives in manufacturing, in-situ CO gas analyzers to optimize combustion efficiency in power plants, PC based data acquisition systems for use in industrial instrumentation, color image scanners for use in desktop publishing, optical bonding to reduce reflections in LCD displays, and most recently sunlight readable LCD displays for use in outdoor digital signage applications.  

Bob has built four successful start-up companies each utilizing different breakthrough technologies as a key component in their business strategies. Over the years Bob has met the many challenges which face early stage high technology companies.  Bob was Founder and President of  CyberResearch and CyberChrome (privately held companies in Branford, CT. with 50 + employees.), Dynatron (acquired by ABB/Asea Brown Boveri) and Parametrics (acquired by Lear Siegler).  
 
Bob holds a BS in Applied Physics from Michigan Tech.  He has completed MBA Marketing and Finance course work at University of Bridgeport and University of New Haven.

Scott C. Nevins 
Scott Nevins was the CEO of E-Tran, a financial services firm serving banks which was one of the few nonfinancial firms the Federal Reserve approved to accept ACH payments over the banking network. Prior to that, Scott was CEO of Protegrity, a database security company, and before that he was the president and COO of GiantBear, a wireless technology services company. Earlier, he was the CEO of ClientSoft, a market leader in extending IBM mainframe applications to the Internet and wireless. He previously held sales and technology management positions at GE Capital. Over his career, he completed fourteen rounds of venture financing.

Scott is now a Senior Investment Advisor in Bernstein Global Wealth Management’s New York office; he provides asset allocation and wealth planning advice to individuals, families, endowments and foundations, and entrepreneurs. 

Scott holds a BA, cum laude, from Fairfield University. He received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award in 1999 and 2000 and Deloitte and Touche’s Fast 50 award in 2000. He serves on the boards of the World Affairs Forum, the Association for Corporate Growth, the Angel Investor Forum, and Connecticut Venture Group (Fairfield County).

Richard J. Resch 
From 1988-98, Dick Resch was Vice-resident for Technology at Cannondale Corporation, a leading producer of high-end bicycles.  In that position, he  was responsible for the re-organization of the company’s manufacturing operations where he pioneered the use of information technologies for manufacturing. and R&D.  Dick has lectured on the Cannondale manufacturing system at Yale, Wharton and at Hewlett-Packard.  

After Cannondale, Dick was interim President of EMPower, an MIT-based startup to develop lightweight electric scooters.  In 1999, he founded DeltaGlide to develop a power-assisted wheelchair that used an innovative closed loop control system that allowed manual wheelchair users to negotiate uneven or difficult terrain as if they were on smooth level ground.  After the sale of DeltaGlide to Johnson and Johnson, he founded Motiv Technology to develop the same control technology for other applications, most recently, electric assisted bicycles, primarily for the European market.

Before beginning his business career, Dick was Professor of Religion at Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa.  He has a PhD in Religion from University of Notre Dame, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Nikolay Shkolnik 
Nick Shkolnik, PhD is the co-inventor of the LiquidPiston engine, and is a cofounder of LiquidPiston, Inc., a venture capital backed startup working to bring a breakthrough high speed diesel engine design from concept to production. LiquidPiston raised $6.5 million in its Series B investment round, completed in December 2011. An MIT incubated R&D company, LiquidPiston is poised to transform ten years of breakthrough thermodynamics research into the world’s most efficient rotary engine. With a fundamental design that scales from lawnmowers, to locomotives, LiquidPiston has the potential to add fifty years to the life of the internal combustion engine industry in a resource-constrained world.

Prior to LiquidPiston, Nick was the Program Manager for the Clean Energy Group at GEN3 Partners, in Boston, where he managed dozens of engineers, physicists and chemists in a variety of consulting projects typically for Fortune 500 companies. He has served in a variety of positions over 9 years of employment with GEN3, including as Vice President of Research and Development for EnGen, a spin-off of GEN3 which developed fuel cell based stationary power applications and high performance redox-based supercapacitors. Dr. Shkolnik is one of less than a few dozen experts nationally in the science of TRIZ, which is a proven systematic approach to solving many technical problems, and is utilized extensively by GEN3 and now by LiquidPiston. 

Nick has 9 publications, 4 conference presentations, 9 patents, 14 patent applications pending, and is the recipient of the Motorola award for creativity. He received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Connecticut in 1984, and an MS in Mechanical Engineering, from Kiev Polytechnic Institute, Ukraine, 1975.

Matthew Barry Smith 
The majority of Matt Smith’s career has been as an entrepreneur. Matt co-founded CompreMedx Cancer Centers (the first publicly traded firm to build freestanding cancer centers in partnership with oncologists and radiologists), co-owned Kramex, a portable and mobile radiology manufacturing company, and co-owned New World Healthcare Solutions, an executive recruiting and online medical education company. He assisted in the turn around and sale of Medical Sterilization, a publicly traded surgical instrumentation firm He co-founded Health Excel Management, a managed care firm specializing in disease state management,  and turned around and sold venture-backed HelpMate Robotics, a publicly traded medical transport firm. He served on the Board of Directors of Baseline Medical and Campus Connects, and was Managing Director of Negin-Smith Partnership, a real estate venture. 

Matt Smith is a member at Merle Sloss and Associates, LLP, a private consulting firm and serves as advisor to two private equity/venture firms and is on the boards of healthcare companies. Previously, Matt was Managing Director, Investments at Connecticut Innovations, Inc, a venture capital firm, and served on the Board of Directors of several CI portfolio firms.

Matt co-authored the first federally funded HMO feasibility study and was in corporate healthcare ventures with GTE New Ventures, Technicon, American Hospital Supply, and National Patent Development, where he rose to President of the Acme-Chaston subsidiary.

Matt holds a BA in Psychology and an MBA from Boston University where he is a member of the Claflin Society and was named to the College of Arts and Sciences Collegium and Academy of Distinguished Alumni. 

Moderator and Meeting Organizer – Manny Ratafia
Manny Ratafia is an entrepreneur, management consultant, and angel investor. He has founded and run ventures in a variety of technology areas, organized numerous conferences and meetings, and has consulted to owners and senior executives of companies on a range of management, market, and technology issues. His educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from The Cooper Union and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT and in engineering and applied physics from Harvard, and an MBA from Dartmouth. He has served on the boards of directors and advisory boards of several start-up companies and non-profit organizations. Manny Ratafia’s research and opinions have been published and quoted in more than 100 general, business and scientific publications in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Manny is a member of the Board of Directors of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Connecticut
DIRECTIONS TO ALUMNI HOUSE, FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY
1073 NORTH BENSON ROAD, FAIRFIELD, CT 06430 
From New York via Connecticut Turnpike (I-95):
Take exit 22 in Connecticut - Round Hill Road. Continue straight through the stop sign at the end of the ramp. At the traffic light, take a left onto North Benson Road (Rt. 135) and continue straight for 0.8 miles (through two traffic lights.) The sign for the main entrance to Fairfield University will be on the left. Turn left into the entrance. Alumni House is the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
From Providence and New Haven via Connecticut Turnpike (I-95):
Take exit 22 in Connecticut - North Benson Road. Turn right at the end of the ramp onto North Benson Rd. (Rte. 135). Go straight for 0.8 miles (through two traffic lights). The main entrance to Fairfield University will be on the left. Turn left into the entrance. Alumni House is the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
From Hartford or Vermont via I-91:
Take I-91 South to I-95 South in New Haven. Take exit 22 in Connecticut - North Benson Road. Turn right at the end of the ramp onto North Benson Rd. (Rte. 135). Go straight for 0.8 miles (through two traffic lights). The main entrance to Fairfield University will be on the left. Turn left into the entrance. Alumni House is the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
From New York via Merritt Parkway (Rt. 15):
Take exit 44. Turn left off the ramp and turn right onto Black Rock Tpke. (Rt. 58) at the light. Proceed 2 miles to Stillson Rd. (Rt. 135) and turn right. Bear left, at the second light, onto North Benson Road. The University entrance will be on your right. Turn right into the entrance. Alumni House will be the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
From Hartford and New Haven via Merritt Parkway (Rt. 15):
Take exit 44, take a quick left off the ramp, then take another quick left onto Black Rock Tpke. (Rt. 58), proceed 2 miles to Stillson Rd. (Rt. 135) and turn right. Bear left, at the second light, onto North Benson Road. The University entrance will be on your right. Turn right into the entrance. Alumni House will be the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
From Boston/New Hampshire and North:
Take the Mass Pike (Route 90) West to I-84 West (exit 9). Merge onto I-91 South. I-91 merges into I-95 South in New Haven. Take exit 22 - North Benson Road. Turn right at the end of the ramp onto North Benson Rd. (Rte. 135). Go straight for 0.8 miles (through two traffic lights). The main entrance to Fairfield University will be on the left. Turn left into the entrance. Alumni House is the first building on your right. Turn right and park on your left.
For directions by train, go to http://www.fairfield.edu/about/about_directions.html