CICP News & Updates

Our colleagues at BioCrossroads yesterday publicly announced the successful fundraising for Indiana Seed Fund II, an $8.25M venture fund aimed at promising early-stage companies in the life sciences sector.  This shows the continuing confidence and commitment of our state’s institutional investors in our entrepreneurial sector’s ability to innovate and commercialize scientific breakthroughs into successful businesses.  (BioCrossroads had already raised more than $135M in risk capital for life sciences ventures.  HALO, a network of angel investors organized by our TechPoint initiative, plays a similar role directing early-stage funding to high-tech start-ups.)

The ability to finance homegrown, high-potential businesses is of vital importance to our economic future.  As Indiana works to emerge from the shadow of the national recession, every effort must be made to attract new investment and jobs to the state as well as incentivize growth among our existing headquartered companies.  But ultimately, it will be our ability to encourage new businesses from the ground up that will yield the best returns in jobs, innovation and wealth creation.  (Start-up firms are responsible for all net job creation in the U.S. over the last thirty years, and the knowledge-intensive employment base created by fast-growing businesses in technology and the life sciences are critical to erasing Indiana’s per capita income gap.)

Legendary entrepreneurs like Colonel Eli Lilly, W.G. Irwin (of Cummins Engine) and Bill Cook helped reshape the Hoosier economy to this day.  Supporting their future counterparts through efforts like the Indiana Seed Fund is essential to building the economy of tomorrow.  Read more about the BioCrossroads’ announcement here.