How to Get Funding for Your Bioenergy Company
LOSING IS NOT AN OPTION
PROFITS Principles, Steering the Company
Funding is tight – almost non-existent. Companies are swelling with capacity and scrambling to meet payroll and debt interest. Dividends are relics of the past and employees remain at many companies because they have nowhere else to go, as their shoulders sag with the burden of increased responsibilities and workload.
Survival of your company requires believing that you are the master of your fate. You steer your company. You control what happens to and within your business, no matter that is happening with the economy, the political landscape or the oil wells in Texas and Saudi Arabia. The bright beam of light now shines towards strategic alliances, mergers and collaborative agreements. Don’t lose your company!
Today, Biofuels Digest begins a new Bioenergy PROFITS Principles series, exploring the company Codexis, and illustrating additional biofuels best practices.
Codexis, Inc. is a clean technology company. The company develops industrial biocatalysts, including enzymes and microbes. Codexis technology is used in the energy industry to enable next generation non-food biofuels and by global pharmaceutical companies for cost-effective manufacturing of human therapeutics. Future commercial applications include carbon management, water treatment and chemical manufacturing.
As you think about finding potential business partners, mergers, acquisitions and/or customers, where might you evaluate the possibilities? The following actions will increase your ability to form strong and profitable alliances with companies that add value to your business:
- Know the company’s origins
- Find out critical company milestones
- Explore the company’s financial health
- Consider future growth
Know the company’s origins
Think about it. Just like with individuals, companies have origins. When a company is born, the owner has dreams and hopes he or she instills within the DNA of the business. Values are intentionally cultivated or quickly take form. Norms and a company culture take shape almost immediately. The vision and mission become clear whether stated or implied and employee workdays are in pursuit of real or imagined rewards. Some of these behaviors result in a ‘healthy organization’, some not. Nonetheless, a culture forms within a company that influences its credibility in the marketplace.
As in previous columns, let’s imagine once again that you lead a biorefinery. You’ve established good credibility. But business is tough now. It makes good business sense to find a solid strategic partner, a company such as Codexis that complements your business. How do you begin your due diligence about Codexis? A smart business owner learns about the company’s start up struggles and successes.
Maxygen, headquartered in Redwood City, California, was founded in 1997. The company, using an iterative process of evolution and breeding developed a series of technologies in molecular biology and protein modification designed to improve specific properties of genes and proteins to create more effective therapies to treat disease. Maxygen focused and continues to focus on creating novel products using its integrated proprietary technologies for human therapeutics and industrial applications.
In February, 2002, Maxygen, Inc. established a wholly owned chemicals subsidiary and named it Codexis, Inc. It established Codexis for the goal of being the leading provider of high-value chemical products and services to the global life science and chemical industry. Its proprietary technologies allow for the rapid discovery and development of catalysts and processes for the efficient and cost-effective synthesis of valuable chemicals. Codexis intends to supply customers with chirally-active biological and chemical catalysts, pharmaceutical intermediates and bulk actives.
Codexis was conceived to augment Maxygen’s broad technology platform. At the time, Maxygen collaborated with six strategic alliances, had over 18 potential products and processes in its research pipeline, six product candidates in development and three proces
Bioenergy PROFITS Principles: Steering the Company and Codexis is a post from: Biofuels Digest
