Georgia Tech Edison Fund

November 9th, 2007 • Entrepreneurship + Startups, Technology, Venture Capital

I just stumbled upon this news release and I must say, I’m pretty impressed. I advocated something like this years ago but I could never get it to happen. It probably helps that Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech’s chief commercialization officer, headed up this effort to get this done. In a nutshell, Georgia Tech is going to run an early seed stage investment fund with money coming from the Charles A. Edison Fund as well as private donations (they are a 501(c)3 so donations are tax deductible). They’ll invest up to $250k in a company but perhaps the most impressive part of the fund is this:

The Fund will be “evergreen,” meaning it will reinvest the proceeds from any liquidity events back into other opportunities.

and..

Donations to the Georgia Tech Edison Fund will be completely targeted to entrepreneurs. The Fund is not charging a management fee, nor is it paying carried interest to the managers, Fleming noted.

Yeah, I know… VCs and angels are going to poo-poo this because how are they going to be successful if the individuals in the fund aren’t rewarded for their performance. Maybe, just maybe the individuals involved want to do this for something more than money. You think? Could it be possible?

All I know is this is a good turn of events for the local community. Kudos Stephen and kudos to Georgia Tech!

UPDATE: Stephen did a quick blog post about the fund here.

Tags: Georgia Tech, seed investing, Venture Capital

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