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Internet venture receives a boost
9/12/2007
By Myron Kukla and Shandra Martinez
The Grand Rapids Press
HOLLAND -- After 18 months of development and planning, a new West Michigan Internet business that will connect authors with publishers is ready to launch.
Creative Byline's financing is coming from a new source: Lakeshore Advantage Capital Seed Fund.
About $1 million in private dollars has been raised by the Holland-Zeeland economic development organization, which primarily will invest in start-up companies drawing upon the area's strong engineering and technology talent base. The seed feed was announced by Lakeshore Advantage President Randy Thelen during a Holland Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast Tuesday.
"We are looking at more innovative products or services that feed off the talent in West Michigan," he said.
"Our area this year was identified by The Wall Street Journal as having one of the top 10 concentrations of engineering talent in the U.S. We think that represents tremendous potential for new ideas and new businesses that can fuel our community's culture of innovation."
The fund is a separate entity from Lakeshore Advantage, which will handle marketing and screening of applicants. The investment committee -- which has representatives from investors in the fund -- will make the final decision.
"We will be investing in firms that aren't ready for bank financing," said Thelen, adding the local private investors in the fund asked to remain anonymous.
In return for the investment, the fund will have an ownership stake in the company.
"It's not a race to distribute these dollars. We'll be making investments between $50,000 and $100,000 per company, which means 10, 15 deals over the next two, three years," Thelen said.
The investment by Lakeshore Advantage was the last piece of investment Creative Byline LLC CEO Brad MacLean needed to take his business to the market.
"We got our initial funding from the Grand Angels, a West Michigan investment group that finances start-up companies, and with capital from Lakeshore Advantage, we are shooting to start in November," said MacLean, who declined to give financing costs for competitive reasons.
"Creative Byline is exactly the type of high-tech, high-growth company we are targeting with the Seed Fund," Thelen said.
"It's sort of like matchmaker.com for publishers and writers," said MacLean, who has one major New York-based publishing firm lined up.
He is working on contracts with several other publishing houses that will pay to get book manuscripts submissions tailored to their needs through Creative Byline.
In addition to charging publishing houses using the Web site, authors with manuscripts to sell will be able to sign up for memberships for $89 a year and submit their books to publishers for a $19 fee per submission.
Send e-mail to the author: lakeshore@grpress.com
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