Festival of Finance

Going for It, Again and Again

More serial entrepreneurs  turned up this year. Among them, Dan Sullivan, CEO at SuperDimension and cofounder, CEO, or board member at 10 medical device companies; Gerald Timm, who was the chief executive at GT Urological; and Maury Taylor, CEO at CHdiagnostics, a Plymouth-based company that makes diagnostic products for people with diabetes. Taylor founded specialty drug distributor Chronimed in Minnetonka and was CEO there. Chronimed was acquired by New York–based MIM Corporation in 2005.

Heading for a Deal Spree

Chris Heim popped up on a panel. Heim and a local partner started Eden Prairie–based 2ndWave Software in 2007 to buy software companies. 2ndWave promptly acquired 25-year-old Amcom Software, a 90-employee firm in Eden Prairie that makes telephone voice recognition software and expects sales of $16 million this year. At the conference, Heim said he would announce three more deals by the end of the year, and two more in 2008.

2ndWave has a deep-pockets partner in Boston-based CIBC Capital Markets, which has committed $60 million to the acquisition effort. “With some leverage, we feel like we today have about $100 million to do acquisitions,” Heim says. Heim was CEO at HighJump Software, a maker of supply chain management software in Eden Prairie. That company grew from $8 million in 1997 to $35 million in 2003. 3M acquired it in 2004.

A common thread unites all of the entrepreneurs who presented at the Collaborative’s Venture Finance Conference, along with some of their funders: They don’t want to leave Minnesota. That is one of the treasures we can be thankful for this holiday season, as we once again count our blessings.