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Start-up businesses looking for local ‘tech angels’

Area leader supports letting investors attend meetings electronically.

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By Thomas Gnau, Staff Writer 8:50 PM Monday, September 14, 2009

For five years, when Ohio technology start-ups have needed crucial early funding, they have often approached Ohio TechAngels, a Columbus-based association of more than 200 investors.

Now, former State Sen. Charles Horn wants to bring more Dayton-area investors to that table — electronically.

Today, Horn works as an attorney from his Kettering home. Horn said his legislative work a decade ago played a role in the creation of the Ohio Third Frontier program, the structure on which the TechAngels association partly relies. Accredited investors can get a 25 percent state tax credit for qualified investments.

Horn — who also served as Kettering mayor and Montgomery County commissioner — is himself an investor who often attends the TechAngels’ monthly meetings. But he says traveling to and from the meetings in northern Columbus can take four hours.

His idea: Have local investors participate in those meetings through real-time video and audio.

“We’ll tap into the Columbus meetings electronically — thank goodness for the technology on that,” Horn said. “We’ll have our people hear all the deals, participate in the questioning (of entrepreneurs), participate in the voting, as though they were there.”

Christina Howard, a vice president of entrepreneurship for the Dayton Development Coalition, said the notion has merit. She thinks a local forum of investors associated with the angel investors could result.

Generally, angel investors provide second-round funding for promising young companies focused on life sciences and technology, Howard said. Ohio’s Entrepreneurial Signature Program — mostly state-funded development services managed locally by the coalition — usually precedes those investors, she said.

When it comes to nurturing businesses, there’s room for both, Howard said. “It’s just more options for funding.”

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