It takes one for the money

NASHUA – The Speed Venture Summit is kind of a speed-dating event that brings together early stage companies and potential investors.

In its second year, the effectiveness of the New Hampshire High Tech Council event to spur financing into upstarts, and thus have an effect on job growth and bringing innovation to market, is still yet to be proven, but its organizers say it has already been effective to generate excitement about high technology in the state.

In fact, the event is bringing together some of the top venture capitalists and angel investors in the region, introducing them to 50 up-and-coming companies in the region.

Here are a few of the hotter New Hampshire companies that will attend.

SafetySpan Inc.

Founder or CEO: Doug Leonardi

Based in: Wilton

Year founded: 2005

Employees: three

Gone to market yet: No

Investment seeking: $500,000

Doug Leonardi, a one-time student of Buckminster Fuller, did not get to use his mechanical-engineering background much in his IT career, until he started his own company, SafetySpan Inc.

He has been carrying out R&D in 2,000 square feet in Wilton. Leonardi created a steel cage system that is "kind of like a jungle gym" as a new means to construct large buildings.

"It's like industrial-grade Legos," Leonardi said. The cage is designed as a structure that can take the place of concrete floors in multi-story buildings.

The company claims it can reduce the cost of constructing a building by five to 10 percent, reduce the carbon footprint and create a lightweight building that is "virtually impervious to collapse."

The structure also creates crawlspace between floors that can be used for wiring and HVAC.

In3D Inc.

Founder or CEO: Bob Noftle

Based in: Wilton

Year founded: 2007

Employees: One

Gone to market yet: No

Investment seeking: $750,000

Bob Noftle worked at SolidWorks Corp., a CAD design company, and started his own company, Cimlogic Inc. to add to computer-aided design technology, but his newest startup, In3D Inc., will bridge the gap between CAD drawings of suppliers and the buyers of parts and components. In3D makes software that allows buyers to go to a company's Web site and drag a part of product onto their own CAD drawings to see if a product will work in their own design plans. The software will be free to suppliers, and In3D plans to make money by charging $1.50 a download or $750 a month to suppliers who want to track just who is downloading their three-dimensional parts. Noftle says his software is valuable as a design tool, but also as a lead service. "This gives suppliers very high-quality leads," he said.

Coldstor Data Inc.

Founder or CEO: Joel Love

Based in: Nashua

Year founded: 2008

Employees: five

Gone to market yet: Yes

Investment seeking: $6.5 million

Joel Love previously worked for Intel Corp., and was exposed to an impending problem of the computer age: The rapid increase in online content is creating a strain on the ability to store it. In fact, there are more than six billion gigabytes of data in the ether, and online data are increasing at a rate of 50 percent a year. The storage capacity of computers has so far been doubling about every two years, an effect well known as Moore's Law, but technology is coming up against technical limits. "The problem is where do we put all this stuff?" Love said. His company, Coldstor, has created a data-storage bank that allows companies to archive their data for an indefinite period of time. The data are tracked with a "chain of custody" and can be retrieved within 48 hours, saving companies the expense of purchasing their own storage capacity.

Valde Systems Inc.

Founder or CEO: Mathew Linder

Based in: Brookline

Year founded: 2003

Employees: Five

Gone to market yet: Yes

Investment seeking: $750,000

Mathew Linder, a former employee of Lucent Technologies Inc., started his own company, Valde Systems Inc., taking to market a vision-processing system called the VS1501 used for autonomous robots, construction and agriculture vehicles, and surveillance applications. The company now plans to introduce a camera, called the VS151. "The processing piece is really our main line of business, we added the camera because our customers couldn't find the right mix of features, price and performance," Linder said. Valde has so far sold about 1,000 systems, and has not yet taken to market its camera. The high-tech camera has a lens that filtered polarizing, infrared and ultraviolet light; it has a high-dynamic range, is water-tight and can be installed with standard automotive tools.

ImmuRx Inc.

Founder or CEO: David DeLucia

Based in: Lebanon

Year founded: 2007

Employees: four

Gone to market yet: No

Investment seeking: $8 million

ImmuRx Inc., a company with a strategy to improve the function of the immune system, has secured $250,000 in investment from Hanover-based Allyon Capital Partners, and $577,000 and $329,000 in health institute grants this year. The startup is now pursing $8 million to take a melanoma vaccine into trial in 2012 at the MD Anderson Cancer Treatment Center in Texas. The immune system is composed of an ancient line of "innate" defenses conserved from the distant past, and an "acquired" set of selective defenses that can generate billions of antibodies to fight a pathogen. ImmuRx has shown that stimulating receptors for both lines of defense, something like a double-lock system requiring two keys to turn it on, creates a much stronger defense. It could apply to cancer, TB, HIV and Hepatitis C. "The platform can be set to attack any given disease," said CEO David DeLucia. "It just depends on the criminal."