The Moeller Ventures Story
Today’s Moeller Ventures focuses on providing customized research services encompassing market analysis, technological due diligence, and financial evaluation for projects related to business development, intellectual property assessment, and investment analysis. I leverage my diverse background spanning 9 years of technology business development consulting, 5 years in the investment banking business, and 10 years with various technology companies, to provide insightful and thorough research to a wide variety of clients, including technology companies, intellectual property law firms, accounting firms, post-secondary universities, venture capital firms, and institutional investors.
Over the years I had the opportunity to work with various clients on research projects that focused on new markets, new applications and, in general, new lines of business for which my clients either didn’t have the internal expertise to pursue, or didn’t have available internal resources. Client examples include Digi-Key Corporation (www.DigiKey.com), a large electronic component distributor, Soligie Inc. (www.Soligie.com), a print-electronics product manufacturer and a division of Taylor Corporation (http://www.taylorcorp.com), the University of Minnesota’s Office of Technology Commercialization (Venture Center and Licensing Center: http://www.research.umn.edu/techcomm/index.html), and Crescendo Ventures (www.crescendoventures.com).
With the formation of Devpeak Technologies (www.Devpeak.com), we now offer a unique combination of capabilities that resulted from the realization that business development projects typically require more than just the market intelligence and strategic direction recommendations, but also need assistance with the initial technological implementation. Devpeak thus combines the core market intelligence with business-enabling technologies such as prototype and development system design/production, Web site development and hosting, as well as search engine optimization and social media implementation initiatives. Overall we focus on the key enabling technologies that specifically leverage the fundamental market intelligence and are intentionally designed to be aligned directly with the core market factors to maximize development investment return. In addition, Devpeak also offers a powerful e-commerce engine to further broaden the availability of its enabling technology solutions. Through this e-commerce channel Devpeak sells hardware development systems as well as software downloadable CAD content, that both enable design engineering customers to more quickly meet their design goals as well as help business development customers drive sales for their products. Our software downloadable EDA component model offering is truly an industry first in applying the iTunes-like sales model to EDA components for PCB CAD tools. We believe Devpeak is uniquely positioned to provide both the customized biz dev consulting as well as the enabling technologies that help companies get to market faster and realize a better return on their new business development investments.
Prior to starting Moeller Ventures and Devpeak Technologies, I spent five years in the investment banking business, first joining Wessels, Arnold and Henderson (a technology boutique firm) in 1997 and through various mergers with Dain Rauscher Wessels (DRW) and RBC Capital Markets…both more mid-bracket IB firms. I was a wireless technology analyst and covered a segment of stocks not typically categorized by Wall Street, but one that I termed “Enabling Wireless Technologies”, and consisted of component companies Alpha Industries, ANADIGICS, CREE, Intersil, Qualcomm, RF Micro Devices, Sirenza Microdevices and TriQuint Semiconductor, and broadband wireless companies Aironet, Alvarion, DMC Stratex Networks, Netro, and Vyyo, as well as Andrew Corporation, Powerwave, REMEC, and Spectrian in the infrastructure sub-system segment. Back before the days of the 2001/2002 restructuring of Wall Street research, I executed research and due diligence for both the investment banking and research departments concerning market analysis, competitive and technological assessments, and financial modeling. I also authored frequent company and industry reports and gave seminars and investor presentations associated with both the covered companies as well as for IPOs, secondary stock offerings, and merger and acquisition transitions. During the DRW time, I was the lead analyst for the secondary stock offerings of TriQuint and REMEC as well as lead analyst on the IPOs of Vyyo, BreezeCOM, and Aironet. The lead-managed IPO of Aironet (an early 802.11 / WiFi broadband wireless LAN company) by DRW was one of the firm’s most successful wireless transactions, going public in July of 1999 for a valuation of $150 million and subsequently purchased by Cisco in a sole-managed M&A transaction by DRW that closed nine months later in March of 2000 for $1.4 billion. My applicable experience and multi-disciplinary approach for the Aironet transaction actually began many years earlier when I designed direct-sequence spread spectrum radios for a start-up named Uniplex (see below). Fundamentally, my most successful approach in the investment banking business was leveraging my technology insight and working hard to better communicating the technological value behind these companies to Wall Street portfolio managers. The re-regulation of Wall Street in 2002 diluted the technological value I could add to investment banking transactions and my ability to communicate with private companies, and the acquisition of DRW by RBC created a dynamically different work environment, that all combined to convinced me to leave the industry in 2002.
Prior to the investment banking business I worked in various engineering and engineering management roles for ADC Telecommunications in the broadband communications group. This was in the 1994-1997 time-frame just as broadband cable technologies were being commercialized, and really just prior to the emergence of low-cost integrated broadband ICs from the likes of Broadcom and others, that ultimately won the market. I led research, development and system integration on multi-dwelling subscriber-termination products for ADC’s hybrid-fiber-coax local loop telephony and data system. During this time I also had a fundamental desire to expand my skills, capabilities and ultimately the value I could add to organizations. As a result, I entered the MBA program (with a focus on new venture management) at the University of St. Thomas in 1995 and also was a freelance technology market analyst in 1996, writing reports for Datapro, (then a division of McGraw-Hill and since acquired by the Gartner Group) on topics such as cellular and PCS wireless technology, wireless data communications and mobile computing. The reports I wrote were published on Datapro’s Wireless Analyst CD-ROM in 1997. The combination of my ADC, Datapro and MBA experiences would subsequently lead to my jump into the investment banking business.
To some degree I’ve always had an entrepreneurial, venture start-up interest and prior to ADC, that interest is what led me to Uniplex Corporation in 1989. Uniplex was a St. Paul based start-up where we developed very early incarnations of what ultimately became wireless LAN technology. In fact, besides a couple contract workers, I was the first official employee hired by the founders. The founders of this business came from the wireless security system business and were attempting to capitalize on a 1985 FCC rule change to the Part 15 unlicensed spectrum usage that allowed for, what was at that time, a somewhat new modulation technique called spread spectrum. Spread spectrum had been used in space and military communications for many years (in fact Heady Lamarr, a 1930’s and 1940’s movie star, was issued one of the early patents on spread spectrum…interesting story….Google it), but commercial applications were limited by FCC band rules. The 1985 ruling changed the Part 15 applications in unlicensed bands and spread spectrum (specifically direct-sequence spread spectrum) was ultimately incorporated in WiFi wireless LAN technology and CDMA cellular technology (largely by Qualcomm’s doing) used by cellular providers and most 3G and 4G wireless specifications. Our work at Uniplex was some of my most educational up to that point, where I was able to work on DSP coding, FPGA design, modulation techniques, and some RF design, as well as system integration of the whole radio communication platform. During my five years at Uniplex we were successful in designing and producing a direct-conversion, direct-sequence spread spectrum radio for the 902-928MHz unlicensed band. Our most notable radio deployment was as part of a luggage cart system solution that was deployed all across the LAX airport in Los Angeles in 1992/1993. Overall, Uniplex was a very bitter-sweet experience. We had the right technology for entry into some very interesting emerging markets that would eventually become huge industry segments. But while the technology was pretty solid at Uniplex, the business pursuits and revenue generating decisions were horrid. This lack of focus on the business side is one of the other experiences that drove my interest in pursuing an MBA and in really putting together the knowledgebase that encompasses all the multiple disciplines needed for a successful business initiative. Good technology alone just doesn’t cut it.
My original goal coming out of grad school was actually to pursue a career in the computer industry. That materialized first with IBM corporation, directly out of school in 1987, and secondly with ETA Systems the following year. The position with IBM is what initially brought me to Minnesota. Interesting enough, during my career research in grad school in 1986, computer systems were one of the most significant business segments in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area, with the likes of Control Data, Cray, Honeywell’s computer systems, and even Sperry and Burroughs (now Unisys) here in town. Today, well, let’s just say it is not quite so significant any more. Medical technology is now the banner label of the Twin Cities, with software and storage systems also being notable…at least in the technology industry. My position with IBM in Rochester, MN was as a verification IC design engineer on chips that merged the System 36 and System 38 computers into the AS400. Interesting work, but didn’t last too long, as I subsequently received a truly unique offer from ETA Systems, a spin-off supercomputer division of Control Data. Despite having worked for IBM for only a short time, I still remember the class with which they conducted business and worked with me. A business lesson I’ve remembered. The position at ETA was in systems integration, specifically on the clock system that drove all the gate array chips. At the time it was truly state-of-the-art and was a very neat organization in which to be involved. But the market shift associated with highly integrated processor solutions diluted the value of customized supercomputers, and ultimately led to the highly publicized closing of ETA in 1989. Another good lesson learned; that deadly competition can come from all sorts of different market angles.
During the mid 1980’s when I was attending the University of Illinois, the electrical engineering program was ranked 4th in the country (behind MIT, Berkley, and Stanford…in that order) and was an amazingly competitive program in which to get accepted. Even though I took an easier route and transferred in as a junior, the classes were still very cut-throat. Unlike today, where our country has a shortage of qualified engineering and technical professionals, and is trying to graduate more people in those professions, in those days many Illinois electrical engineering classes were graded on a straight Bell curve and the professors liked to boast about the fact that 30% of the students don’t make it through the program. Hopefully that’s changed today. Nonetheless, Illinois was a great experience. The big school environment helped me develop a proactive, create-your-own-opportunities, perspective that serves me well today. I was successful enough in doing just that to garner an undergraduate teaching assistantship my senior year with Dr. Sidney Bowhill that led to a graduate student research appointment with Dr. Erhan Kudeki (still a professor at Illinois), where I studied signal processing techniques and computer systems. My MSEE thesis was titled “Computer Strategies in the Analysis and Acquisition of Radar Data”. My mother, a former librarian at Illinois, told me that my Master’s thesis has a Dewey Decimal System number at the University of Illinois library of “Q.621.3TA7MJ”, though I (nor likely anyone else) have never had a need to check out my thesis. Prior to Illinois, I attended Parkland College, which was a great stepping stone for me where I learned to be a much better student, having been a respectable but not stellar “B” grade point student in high school. Parkland also provided me the opportunity to continue to pole vault, a high-school sport of mine, but that’s a whole other story.
Jim Moeller
