Maybe the best way for Connecticut Innovations to argue that it needs more state investment is to make use of the money it already has.
That seems to be the strategy of CI President Frank A. Dinucci.
Dinucci, named CI president in September, announced his first investment deal last week: $1 million for LegiTime Technologies, of Westport, a maker of security software for e-mail, instant messaging and online phone service.
But that’s just the first deal out of the gate. CI’s board has already approved $3 million in financing for four other companies. Even if those deals aren’t closed until the end of the second quarter, a $4 million midway point total would nearly triple the organization’s rate of investment for all of last year, when it made committed $2.5 million in equity.
Besides writing checks looking into companies, Dinucci has been petitioning the General Assembly to set aside $75 million in new investment cash, both for CI’s existing programs and a new fund he has proposed.
He told the Commerce Committee in February that CI is undergoing its strongest investment activity since 1999, but signing away more of CI’s existing money might demonstrate the organization’s desire for more in a way that Power Point slides cannot.
For instance, CI is close to finalizing a $3.5 million loan from CI’s bioscience facilities fund that will bring a New York company to Connecticut. About $32 million of that fund has already been committed, not including that deal, and only a total of $56 million has been allocated.
“We’re getting very close to that,” Dinucci said.
As a private investor, Dinucci has never had the geographic limitations he does at CI, the quasi-state organization that invests only in Connecticut companies it believes can grow jobs. He attests to being tremendously impressed with the quality of companies that he has seen, but he has also scoured for companies in other places that might have a reason to move to Connecticut, whether for the money, the local workforce, the location or personal roots in the state.
At a J.P. Morgan health care conference in January, Dinucci pitched Connecticut to innovators at university hospitals in New York and New Jersey. It seems to have paid off: One of the deals approved by the CI board would bring technology from the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey to Connecticut for commercialization.
“They were very interested in bringing their companies to Connecticut,” Dinucci said of attendees.
About a quarter of CI’s investments are in bioscience, a portion that is likely to rise under Dinucci, who specialized in biomedical and healthcare financing as managing director and principal of Forest Street Capital in New Canaan.
