Entrepreneurs to Meet Prospective Financiers : Venture Capital Forum Set Jan. 29-31

About 40 entrepreneurs seeking investment funds are scheduled to show off their products to prospective financiers, including groups from Japan and Sweden, during the third annual California Venture Capital Forum and Pacific Rim Financial Symposium to be held Jan. 29 to 31 at Chapman College in Orange.

Symposium executive director William J. Anthony said one group of Swedish investors is negotiating a live satellite broadcast of the symposium, where start-up inventors hope to entice individual and corporate investors into funding their products. If the Malmo Exchange House, the Swedish organization negotiating the broadcast, obtains satellite time, Anthony said, the symposium’s presentations would be beamed live to Japan as well.

In any case, both the Swedes and the Japanese plan to videotape the event. A seven-minute film made from a videotape of last year’s symposium aired on Swedish television and was shown to 450 corporate representatives at a similar symposium in that country last year, Anthony said.

For the past two years, the symposium has been held in August, but organizers switched the event to late January because investors complained that the August meeting was too late in the year. Because it can take several months to negotiate a financial agreement with an entrepreneur, negotiations begun in August or September often are not completed in time to enable the parties to take full advantage of tax benefits for the year, Anthony said.

About one out of every 80 interested entrepreneurs, most from Orange County, qualified for the symposium, based on the refinement and research data available on their products. Anthony said he expects about 50 investors, representing 100 financial resources, to attend the symposium.