By Donna Hogan
Special Correspondent for TNAZ

Henrik Lauritzen designed stylish sunglasses tough enough for the harsh Norwegian climate while bagging his MBA at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix.

Jeremy Kelstrom designed a marketing plan for sound-based signature verification in the cocoon of an Arizona State University business incubator.

Neither of the innovators need nor want seed money -- right now.

But like dozens of other budding entrepreneurs from such prestigious educational organizations as Harvard, Caltech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they showed up at the kick-off to a venture capital conference in Scottsdale to schmooze investors and make valuable contacts for the future.

The University & Global Technology Showcase, staged at ASU's SkySong complex, was the prologue to 2009 Invest Southwest, the annual gathering of those with money to invest and a dozen or so young companies hoping to snag some cash to fuel growth.

Unlike those ready-to-go businesses, the products and research advances touted by the universities and other global entities at the pre-conference showcase are "early-stage businesses" not ready for a full-out debut, said Julia Rosen, ASU associate vice president for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The get-together helps forge a bond between innovators and investors and keeps both sides aware of the pipelines of upcoming cash and technology, Rosen said.

And plenty of each was in attendance.

Investors at the showcase represented more than $15 billion in potential capital to dole out, said Charlie Lewis, vice president of Venture Development for Arizona Technology Enterprises, the conduit between ASU researchers and the real business world.

The 14 top universities launch more than 100 spin-offs a year, Lewis said, so educational institutions are fertile ground for mining the products and businesses of the next decade.

The showcase was much more expansive in its geographic scope than Invest Southwest. Nearly two dozen erudite institutions and global management companies from at least five countries each got six minutes to tout one or more major advances in the works.

Richard Stokes of Dublin City University hyped advanced plasma sources for solar cell production.

Andre Averbug of Brazil-based PV Inova showcased an advanced GPS system for mass transportation systems.

The products or procedures other researchers presented may someday cure cancer or colitis, keep transplantable organs viable for days, make solar power cheap, detect nuclear bombs or fight mold.

But why show up with impressive slides and convincing stats if no money is forthcoming to propel these great ideas?

"You can't do much in five minutes, but you can leave an impression," Lauritzen said. "And you can feel out what venture capitalists are looking for."

Lauritzen's already started selling his sunglasses in Norway, a country whose 4 million inhabitants typically purchase a combined 3 million pairs of new shades a year because of the glaring sun, he said. He is hoping to develop products next year with the same Scandinavian design but, better suited to the U.S. market.

Kelstrom, whose SkySong-based company Arizona Security, was nurtured by ASU, helping him to land the North American rights to market technology designed by Rolls-Royce engineers that verifies signatures through the sounds caused by the peaks and valleys of pressure during the signing process.

Practical applications for everything from child care permissions to secure record handling to financial guarantees are huge, he said.

Kelstrom, like Lauritzen, said he hoped to capture the eye and ear of the investment community at the showcase and find out how the experts view his company's potential.

The investors spoke only in general terms about the current state of capital markets.

Like everything else in a down economy, seed money is scarcer than a decade ago, and those who dole it out are more demanding, said Ralph Taylor-Smith, general partner at Battelle Ventures, a private equity investment firm.

"For those who have capital to invest, times are good," he said. "It is clearly a buyers' market."

Those buyers want even the most promising products or ideas to be further along the to-market path than they required a few years ago, said Bill Gerber, investment partner at Bay City Capital.

"More and more, good ideas will stay incubated in universities and get further along before they will get funded," Gerber said.

"But that's a good thing," he said, since in the flush years, a lot of unworthy products sopped up available capital.

So if investment money is tight, why did ASU invite the big-time competition to the party?

The showcase, with its international reach, is unprecedented in the United States, Rosen said.

And that helps the university form new research partnerships, boost its prestige among the investment community and raise its profile as a global player, she said.