Pitches fly at UVa Venture Summit

Start-up companies with interests ranging from golf shoes to blood clots threw pitches to investment capitalists Friday at the close of the University of Virginia’s third annual Venture Summit.

The companies all share UVa connections, whether through university-sponsored or -conducted research being offered up to the industrial world or through company partners and executives being alumni.

Byron Hewett, executive chairman of BioBehavioral Diagnostics, told the capitalists that his company’s device measures body movement and response times while conducting tests to determine whether a patient has difficulty maintaining concentration.

“A lot of kids are being diagnosed quickly and a lot of parents may not accept that the diagnosis is real,” Hewett said. “The clinicians that use our system can perform a baseline test and then compare future tests to determine whether medications are effective.”

Reenst Lesemann, CEO of Columbia Power Technologies, told the capitalists that ocean-based, power-generating buoys are the electric power wave of the future, at least in Europe.

The company has received contracts with the U.S. Navy and Department of Energy but much of its work is being done in cooperation with European utilities, which are more willing to invest in renewable sources such as offshore wind generators.

Lesemann said Columbia’s wave generators use both the leading and trailing edges of the wave to create power. The devices, which would be nearly 80 feet tall, would be moored in groups with generated power cabled back to shore.

“European utilities are different because they rely on Russian natural gas and less stable sources of baseline energy, so they want to be on the cutting edge,” Lesemann said. “They have the balance sheet and are willing to use that balance sheet to find new resources.”

The UVa research connection has proven commercially fruitful. According to the UVa Patent Foundation, 32 patents were awarded to the university in 2010. It can take several years for a patent to work its way from submittal to approval, officials noted.

From 2005 to 2010, UVa researchers reported inventing 885 technologies, 302 of which have been licensed to companies and institutions for further development, officials said.

Some researchers have become adept at turning research into business.

William Walker, an expert in ultrasound techniques, has spearheaded research that was spun off into commercial enterprises at least three times. His latest effort is HemoSonic, an on-site diagnostic test that uses ultrasound to determine strength of blood cells to help stop bleeding or prevent blood clots.

“Bleeding causes 40 percent of deaths within 24 hours of an injury,” Walker told the amassed investors. “The formation of blood clots is another danger. [Tennis player] Serena Williams recently developed a pulmonary embolism and, if Serena Williams can develop one, I worry about me.”

But while technology backed most of the start-ups, Sean Eidson’s spikeless golf shoe, sold under the brand True Linkswear, went the other way.

Eidson’s shoe eschews high-tech for comfort and natural gait, stance and movement.

“You can feel the ground through the sole,” Eidson said, presenting a pair of shoes for inspection. “Our shoe is different than traditional golf shoes that are built with the idea of ‘let’s nail ourselves to the ground.’ That’s not what we want.”

The shoes have been a hit. Publicity has brought sporting goods stores knocking on the company’s door, including some large retailers that were turned down.

“Some of the stores are too big for us,” Eidson said. “Their order could consume all of the product we could make and buy it at a discount and we’re not in the position to do that, at this point.”