Rochester Newspaper Reports Pennsylvania’s BFTP Model Needed

According to a recent article in the Rochester (NY) Democrat, a Rochester-based venture capital fund is conducting a study about how New York State funds translational research—high-tech research happening within New York’s colleges and universities.

The article states that Pennsylvania annually puts $20 million in taxpayer dollars toward new technology businesses through Ben Franklin Technology Partners and notes that the payoff has been good for the state, with more than 10,000 jobs created between 2002 and 2006.

According to the study, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas all are having better success at landing venture capital funding to turn university R&D into business in large part because those states all put tax dollars behind the economic development effort.

Seed funding is one of the areas where BFTP plays a vital role in helping early-stage technology companies and moving them from the lab to commercialization. The report states that a lack of seed funding is a problem for young tech companies everywhere because venture capital firms and “angel” investors focus on later-stage companies. BFTP provides a bridge between the earliest funding sources—the self-funding of the entrepreneur—and later stages of financing.