ITEN Newsletter Nov/Dec 2010

Though a global company,Savvis, Inc. is headquartered in Town and Country, Mo., and is proud to support local technology leadership through the St. Louis IT Coalition, Innovate St. Louis and IT Entrepreneur Network.

Savvis is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises. More than 2,500 unique clients, including 30 of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500, use Savvis to reduce capital expense, improve service levels and harness the latest advances in cloud computing.

Key Metrics

• Significant operations in North America, Europe and Asia
• Global infrastructure extends to 45 countries
• 31 data centers
• More than 2,200 employees with deep expertise in technical operations, customer support, engineering and consulting
• $874 million revenue in 2009 

Savvis focuses exclusively on providing IT services to business enterprises. Because of its global infrastructure, management systems and business model, Savvis has the unique capability to deliver fully managed and integrated IT solutions to enterprises with offices around the world.

Savvis provides IT infrastructure services that can be used as part of a total outsourcing solution or to selectively support specific applications or business units. Services include cloud computing, managed hosting, colocation and network solutions.

Savvis supports clients by responding to issues in a timely, global and thorough basis. Savvis offers 24/7 support, operation center and crisis management expertise, industry-specific and global field account teams, and state-of-the-art systems and tools that provide clients with transparent, best-of-class experiences.

For more information about Savvis, visitwww.savvis.net.

Ted Feierstein and Bob Van Eerden, principals of Primemetrix, LLC, a unique Chicago-based investment and analysis venture, have established a close working relationship with ITEN.   They presented an all-day Killer Deal Boot Camp to a sizeable group of ITEN ventures, investors and mentors.   Focused on lean software and agile technology business models, the Boot Camp walked through the construction of sophisticated financial projection tools as well as a focused investor presentation deck aimed at the key issues investors need to see in a deal.

After the Boot Camp, ITEN invited Feierstein to attend the first, formative meeting of a group of local seed stage investors interested in ITEN's deal flow.  We also arranged for him to join the Missouri Venture Forum panel presentation, "Capital Outlook for 2011" held the next day, on November 18.

Primemetrix is working to create a regional network of IT entrepreneur acceleration programs and interested investors.  St. Louis/ITEN has become the "first mover" region outside of Chicago for them.   Expect continually expanding connections into the Chicago and Midwest regional investor communities via the Primemetrix/ITEN affiliation for the benefit of our ventures!

Mentoring for ITEN has returned to me easily more value than the time it has consumed, and  though not easily quantified, the benefit is substantial.  The mentoring dynamic encourages a more open interaction that can sharpen your ability to enable and enhance others (a major leadership key.)  I do not profess to be an expert on mentoring, but extensive expertise is not necessary, and just engaging in the process stimulates your own self-development as much as (hopefully) your mentoring recipient (i.e. victim).  As a professional innovator and innovation facilitator, across diverse roles in multiple endeavors including successes and (instructive) failures, I have not encountered a single situation that a mentor's assistance could not improve.  Likewise, for those of you considering finding a mentor, the effort required may not be small, but their substantial value should not go unclaimed.

Since this is a mentor spotlight, I'll turn now to the requisite biographic info.  My personal journey has involved (imho) uncommonly wide ranging pursuits (including inventor, patent practitioner, theoretical physicist, metal sculptor, tennis pro, and -repeatedly- entrepreneur.)  Presently, I am principal of Klotzer Patents, a theoretical physics researcher at Washington University, and am involved in select entrepreneurial invention development efforts; following prior stints such as principal collaborating inventor, chief scientist, IP director, and VP of Research & Development at LifeForce, Inc. (we made exceptional technical & patent achievements,  yet were still undone by incompetent business execution); and patent agent at Thompson Coburn LLC.

Professionally, first call on my time is focused on client needs (primarily patent prosecution matters) although I have also, when appropriate, agreed to provide innovation consulting, technical and/or scientific analysis, inventing on demand, and other services.  One primary focus of how I strive to fulfill my roles (and mentor) is to develop and implement innovations and patents as real world business tools from inception rather than attempting to later adapt them to separately conceived business goals, or even more riskily, to conform business strategy to the options dictated by innovation and/or Intellectual Property happenstances.  I have also become increasingly more active in coaching clients' innovation efforts, wherein many are surprised to learn that innovating is a skill that is systematically improvable.

For such a short history, ITEN's capacities have greatly aided new local IT ventures' progress, so much progress in fact that non-IT ventures have been trying to get in on the fun.  I am firmly convinced that the ITEN model is ripe for expansion into other technologies, though there is a need for other organizations to step up and assume a greater catalyzing role akin to ITEN.  Additionally, while ITEN is an exceptional start, for the St. Louis area to fully realize its potential as a locus for successful technology venture generation, a broader collaboration among all parties involved or interested in tech start-ups should be cultivated.  A "new venture ecosystem" perspective could be adopted, wherein the interrelated needs and interests of the various parties can be harmonized rather than fragmented.  For example, capital investors could collectively determine and publicly provide a common framework for the parameters that guide their investment decisions and then coordinate these efforts with marketing and financial  projection analysts to arrange protocols that a nascent start-up can address in a plug and play fashion.  This sort of inter-disciplinary coordination could be modeled after the standards setting functions of the IEEE that enable harmonized and competitive technology developments.  Rather than a start-up needing to research and then hope that they found the germane questions, they could just access the predetermined protocols and focus their energy on finding suitable answers, without concern about addressing the wrong issues.