Entrepreneur school | MCED's Top Gun program aims high
Photo/Taylor Smith
Steve Bazinet, president of the Maine Center for Enterprise Development, has targeted technology-based entrepreneurs for Top Gun in hopes of attracting outside attention and investment
Steve Bazinet’s looking for the next very big thing: innovative entrepreneurs who can see their ideas and companies generating millions in revenues from a headquarters in Maine. The timid need not apply.
For the unabashed, the president of the Maine Center for Enterprise Development in Portland is offering a personal mentor, access to lawyers, accountants and industry professionals. And 12 weeks of homework that culminate in a pitch before people with real money.
Bazinet calls the program “Top Gun.” The program’s premise was inspired by ventures in other states, says Bazinet, and yes, the name’s a nod to a certain Tom Cruise movie. “I’m trying to get the word out: ‘Here’s a next generation business leader, [let’s] keep them here, keep their technology here and put them on the map,’” Bazinet says.
For the Top Gun pilot project, he’s assembled a board of advisors and 40-plus professionals willing to donate time and talent from across the state. They come from the University of Maine, TD Banknorth, investor groups like Maine Angels and more. “It’s just the Maine way to keep to yourself unless asked — well, I’m asking. I have yet to hear no,” Bazinet says.
Kerem Durdag, an adviser, mentor and slated presenter, says busy as he is, it was easy to sign on. “At the end of the day, it’s karma. If I help a company in Maine succeed, I believe my kids will have a reason to stay here,” says Durdag of Scarborough, the Maine-based director of sales and marketing at SenGenuity, a sensor developer and division of Hudson, N.H.-based technology company Vectron International. “Nine out of 10 companies go up in flames, but if that one company sticks, it could be the next Idexx or Fairchild.”
There’s another reason to get involved, he says: “It’s my belief if we don’t do this with burgeoning technology companies, I don’t think Maine’s economy has a future.”
A program is born
Bazinet says not long ago he remembers hearing a description of KTEC PIPELINE, a successful entrepreneurial incubator in Kansas City, Kansas. “As I was listening to the presentation, I asked, ‘Is it kind of like the Top Gun program that naval aviators do?’”
The answer was yes: reach out to the best and the brightest. Only a year into his position at MCED, Bazinet says he asked why that approach, and those types of investments, weren’t present in Maine. He heard back from contacts that startups here weren’t sufficiently prepared and that the managerial talent wasn’t developed yet. “I don’t accept that we don’t have these types of businesses and we don’t have the entrepreneurs capable of doing it,” Bazinet says.
His notion intrigued the Maine Technology Institute, which gave MCED $50,000 for Top Gun. With the grant defraying some costs, course participants pay $275 for 12 weeks. Prospective members of the first class had until July 31 to apply. Enrollment for the first class of eight to 12 entrepreneurs will be set by Aug. 14.
Weekly sessions will cover themes like capital and funding structures and what investors look for in a business plan. There’s room for an additional weekly roundtable with classmates and one-on-one time with a lead mentor. Participants can also call on anyone in the pool of mentors for specific questions.
Bazinet targeted technology-based entrepreneurs for the program. Technology-based jobs pay more, he says, which will in turn increase the tax base and have the potential to draw outside attention and investment.
Early applicants covered a fair spectrum of ideas and industry, according to Durdag: software, pharmaceuticals, wood pellets, wind farms. “The goal for the group is not to be Harvard Business School northern campus,” Durdag says. Lessons will be more give and take, “an experiential sharing of information and know-how,” he says.
Before becoming director of sales and marketing for SenGenuity, Durdag was CEO of a startup bought by Vectron. He’s been on both sides, Durdag says, giving and receiving advice. He envisions spending about an hour a week with whomever he’s matched. “Entrepreneurs tend to not be too shy about ambition. It tends to be very easy to throw out large numbers,” he says. “Mentors’ roles are as the Jedi master of trying to figure out if they can focus that in.”
Mentors will have to ask the tough questions, Bazinet says. Is the entrepreneur’s product needed in the marketplace? Who’s going to buy it? And how? “Oftentimes entrepreneurs are very optimistic and whatever they’ve created can’t fail,” Bazinet says.
He purposely kept eligibility for the program broad: It is open to budding entrepreneurs with just an idea, as well as to people behind established companies that are in transition. For instance, someone who’s inherited a family business and hit a wall, he says. The vision, either way, has to be big — becoming a player in the national, if not international, market.
“The data shows the state of Maine creates a lot of businesses that have one to nine people,” Bazinet says. Less than one-half of 1% expand to 10 or more and “the rest stall. So I ask myself and the people I rely upon, ‘What’s missing?’ The need is to clearly provide these young businesses [with support], teach them what they don’t know.”
Certified public accountants, lawyers, bankers and professionals at placement firms have offered to help the Top Gun entrepreneurs along the way, Bazinet says, many offering free or discounted rates, driven by the desire to give back and perhaps create future clients.
All 12 weeks of mentoring and lessons lead to a final pitch day, tentatively set for Nov. 19 with venture capitalists, angel investors and bankers in the audience — people from inside Maine and out of state — he says, and, one by one, each entrepreneur giving it their all. Bazinet hopes someone pitches well enough to land a deal that day. “All we can do is introduce, educate and instruct them,” he says.
Roger Brooks, manager of commercialization and cluster support at MTI, as well as a pilot adviser, says southern Maine is a good place to start Top Gun. After measuring the demand, and seeing what works and what doesn’t in the pilot, it might be worth launching in Bangor or elsewhere around the state, he says. “We’re very optimistic,” he adds. “We’re very convinced it’s a strong need.”
“It’s brought some [entrepreneurs] forward that I didn’t know were out there, and I consider myself pretty well connected,” says Tony Perkins, another Top Gun adviser and a principal in TechVentures Group, a division of Portland-based law firm Bernstein Shur that specializes in working with new businesses. “It’s brought folks out of their basements, out of their garages.” If the pilot is successful, it could ultimately attract entrepreneurs to Maine, Perkins says, with Top Gun’s quick schooling and access to providing incentives to move here.
“It will either fly or it won’t,” Bazinet says. “If it does, great things can happen.”
Kathryn Skelton, a writer based in Litchfield, can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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