Innovators meet investors at Angel Venture Fair

The ideas were innovative. The presentations were sharp. The financial projections were almost certainly optimistic.

The region's 12th annual Angel Venture Fair drew about 240 people Monday and Tuesday to Philadelphia's tony Union League - a fitting setting for those who dream of striking it big with the next New New Thing, or at least being one of the Thing's early investors.

Owners of 125 companies applied for the chance to promote their ideas to 150 of the so-called angel investors - people with the means to help a new company get off the ground, often because they have themselves cashed in on successful entrepreneurial efforts.

Thirty won the chance to make 10-minute PowerPoint presentations Tuesday to rooms crowded with dozens of potential angels. Later on, 19 more tried something new: two-minute pitches, done face-to-face with people who might help bring their dreams to fruition.

Leaders of the Private Investors Forum, sponsor of the two-day fair, billed the speed-dating-style presentations as their own version of ABC's Shark Tank, a reality show that matches inventors with investors.

The proposals on display at the Union League maybe weren't quite ready for prime-time play. But there were plenty of ideas to whet investors' appetites, such as:

OxiCool, based in the University City Science Center, seeking $2 million to bring its greener mobile air-conditioning technology to the million trucks on U.S. highways outfitted with sleeper cabs.

Stealth Marketing, a Kennett Square company seeking $600,000 to fast-forward its technology for TV commercials that foil DVR systems such as TiVo. While viewers fast-forward, Stealth's system will show them four- to six-second commercials they can't avoid.

Presymtec Medical, seeking $2 million to advance its remote-monitoring system it says will enable patients with lung conditions (and their insurers) to avert costly hospitalizations by catching early signs of infection.

Chi Sage Systems, a Center City start-up that uses wastewater as an energy source for heat-pump systems, and offered a PowerPoint slide pitching its "game changer" new energy source: a toilet.

If the ideas and occasional jokes were aimed at grabbing investors' attention, it was the financial projections that drew many of the participants' questions - and sometimes their skepticism.

OxiCool, for example, hopes to accelerate from no sales revenue this year and next to $72 million in 2014 - a plausible projection, perhaps, if it succeeds in getting its system adopted as original equipment on the 100,000 new sleeper cabs sold each year.

Ravikant Barot, OxiCool founder and chief executive officer, said that the system cuts diesel usage for air-conditioning by 90 percent, and that his company has a joint-development deal with an unidentified large company.

But moving forward costs money. That's why Barot took his case to the Union League, even though he worried that the region's investors were more focused on biotech and information technology.

"There are not many people here who understand green tech," Barot said. "Most angel investors here made their money in IT and biotech."

Ken Schwenke, a Bryn Mawr investor who helped screen applicants for the angel fair, said investing in familiar areas was a common pattern for angels, who often hope to offer their expertise as well as their cash.

"I'm not a big biotech investor because I just don't know that area," said Schwenke, who in 2006 sold a successful start-up, Off-Campus Dining Network, to the French food-services giant Sodexho. "I could lose money much more creatively than investing in biotech - like by going to a casino."

The payoff for angel investors is hardly more guaranteed, said fair participants.

"It's the typical venture scenario," said Valerie Gaydos, a Pittsburgh native and successful entrepreneur who now heads the Private Investors Forum. "You invest in 10 companies, and over a decade one or two do well."

If one hits a home run, all the better. But Gaydos said angels can't count on it.

"It's a little bit better than investing in the market, but a lot more fun. You feel like you're building America."