Spotlights
Spotlight on Creativity
July 2008
July's spotlight is local entrepreneur Steven Welch. In January 2001 Steven founded Mitos Technologies, Inc. (the first Mitos company), where he engineered and patented the Mitos FREE FLOW® valve - the premier valve for biopharmaceutical manufacturing. In July 2007, Steven sold the Mitos group of companies that he had started building six years earlier to Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH) - an S&P 500 company.
Since selling Mitos, Steven has co-founded (along with David Bookspan and Michael Levinson) a revolutionary pre-seed venture fund; DreamIt Ventures. The fund is in search of enthusiastic, bright and excessively motivated college students with big ideas who can build a prototype, beta or market ready product or service in three months. DreamIt will run from May 21 through August 22, 2008. In late May 2008, DreamIt Ventures was awarded $100,000 from Innovation Philadelphia's Creative Economy Investment Fund.
In addition to DreamIt Ventures, Steven has been an active angel investor, and is a member of Robinhood Ventures, an angel investment group.
Photo (left to right): David Bookspan, Michael Levinson and Steven Welch.
Your name:
Steven Welch
Firm/company:
DreamIt Ventures
Title:
Co-Founder along with David Bookspan and Michael Levinson
Current Location:
Philadelphia Science Center
Hometown:
West Chester, PA
Favorite Philadelphia neighborhood:
Manayunk
Best advice you've ever been given:
Take risks while you are young.
Your favorite thing about living in the Philadelphia Region:
Being able to look forward to each baseball, basketball, hockey and football season with hope that we might end our city's drought without a sports title.
Your favorite thing about working in the Philadelphia Region:
The diversity of industries and experiences is unmatched in any other city I have been. The Philadelphia region is the cornerstone in developing everything from the next generation of web based business to developing the next cancer vaccine.
Why start a business in the Philadelphia Region?
We believe unique changes in the early stage startups over the past decade have created a need for a different type of venture fund. As development/startup costs have decreased and VC's have moved to larger deals we felt there was a gap in the funding needed to help ideas into businesses. DreamIt Ventures' premise is that the region has all the ingredients necessary to build a vibrant start up community. The abundance of excellent Universities, state programs, capital and most importantly great people with ideas provides the bedrock of a startup community.
What are the challenges of owning a business in the Philadelphia Region?
For DreamIt the challenge has been connecting all the different pockets of innovation. As we began to build the DreamIt business we were amazed at all the diversity of innovative groups from Innovation Philadelphia, The Science Center, the different university programs, Ben Franklin, and Philly Startup Leaders. One of our biggest issues has been being able to keep all of the regions groups involved since there have been so many overwhelming offers to help.
DreamIt Ventures is a pre-seed investment fund providing startup capital and business guidance to aspiring technology businesses, catapulting selected businesses from concept stage to market-ready companies in three months.
DreamIt offers selected start-up companies up to $30,000 in pre-seed funding, the advice and guidance from a team of hand-selected business advisors and "gurus", counsel and services from leading law firms and accounting firms to form their companies, and a rostrum of nationally recognized speakers to provide insight into launching great companies. DreamIt Companies will also have the opportunity (if they want) to work with fulltime C-level business strategists.
In 2008 DreamIt has 11 companies participating from mid-May through mid-August and will be focusing exclusively on developing their products and businesses. The program culminates with a Funding Day, where DreamIt Companies will have the chance to present their companies to venture capitalists, angel investors and other funding sources.
To learn more about Steven and his work in the region, visit:
http://www.dreamitventures.com.