Pre-conference Workshop: How to Accelerate the Commercialization of Biofuels 

A TINY Investor's Perspective

Doug Jamison, Chairman and CEO, Harris & Harris Group, Inc

This presentation will address three concepts that investors in the biofuels space must tackle. It will begin by focusing on some of the issues currently facing venture investors in a relatively nascent investment space. Next, the question of who will succeed in extracting the value in biofuels will be addressed. Many of the biofuel companies that have emerged are developing complex technologies. However, biofuel development often requires the massive scale-up of plants and facilities. Traditionally, those that provide the capital for building and managing the plants are different than those that provide the capital for developing the technology. Who will win this potential “tug of war” to capture the value from the enterprise? The presentation will conclude by viewing biofuel investing through the prism of investors with a fund size under $200 million.
 

Speaker Bio:
Doug Jamison is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and a Managing Director of Harris & Harris Group, Inc., a publicly traded venture capital company listed on the Nasdaq Global Market (NASDAQ: TINY). Harris & Harris Group focuses solely in making initial investments in “tiny” technologies, which it defines as nanotechnology and microsystems.

He has previously held the positions of President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Harris & Harris Group, Inc. He is also currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Harris & Harris Enterprises, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Harris & Harris Group. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Ancora Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Mersana Therapeutics, Inc., and Nextreme Thermal Solutions, Inc., and a Board observer in Solazyme, Inc., and Metabolon, Inc., privately held nanotechnology-enabled portfolio companies of Harris & Harris Group. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of "Nanotechnology Law & Business." He is Co-Chair of the Advisory Board, Converging Technology Bar Association, a member of the University of Pennsylvania Nano-Bio Interface Ethics Advisory Board, and a member of the Advisory Board, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Nanotechnology Venture Forum. Prior to joining Harris & Harris Group, he was a Senior Technology Manager at the University of Utah Technology Transfer Office, where he managed intellectual property in physics, chemistry and the engineering sciences. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College (B.A., 1992) and the University of Utah (M.S., 1999).