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[Cape Town | ITWeb, 9 May 2006] -
Business excellence awards programme, Technology Top 100 (TT100) has teamed up with the Department of Science and Technology and Eskom to survey the state of technology venture capital locally.The objective of the survey is to examine the options and the problems emerging companies face when looking for the venture (or seed) capital they need to get their projects off the ground, says TT100 GM Stephan Lamprecht.“No one really knows just how much money is out there for these companies to apply for funding. Furthermore, is the money that is being made available actually being invested wisely?” he asks.Lamprecht says other factors affecting funding include the constraints applied to the agreements.The survey will identify existing role players and define the key challenges and opportunities in the market, he says. It will also detail organisations looking for funding and investment.The survey's results will be of interest to existing funding providers and funding service providers such as brokers, deal-makers, due diligence practitioners, intellectual property lawyers and tax consultants.The survey is also being supported by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange's alternative listing division AltX, and life sciences incubator Acorn Technologies and its related Web site.“Since we started the TT100 programme, smaller companies have told us their woes about funding. Now we are trying to quantify the problem,” he says.The survey will extract information from companies' entries into this year's TT100 awards.The call for entries for the emerging category – companies that have been in existence for less than three years – closes 19 May. For more established companies the call for entries closes at the end of May.Awards for the emerging category will be presented at venues nationwide in August and the final awards presentation will take place on 30 November in Johannesburg.“So far we have more than 30 entries in the emerging companies category. Last year we received a total of 65. What is quite encouraging is that many of the entries we have received are from companies entering for the first time,” Lamprecht says.
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