Venture Capital
Issue No. 1 - July/August 2001
First Tuesday
Four MBA graduates who wanted to stay in South Australia formed the company last year. Company spokesman, Conor McKenna says Twoeyes’ aim is to commercialise and market products and services people want — a challenge when it’s so easy to be distracted by IT bells and whistles and a constantly shifting marketplace.
Most projects are IT related, but Twoeyes doesn’t confine itself to that sector. In the early stages Twoeyes works with the innovator to solidify goals and build a promising idea into a viable business plan. The point, Conor says, is to give potential investors confidence not only in the idea, but the management and drive behind it. “We work to speed up commercialisation, or ‘investment readiness’,” he says.
The innovator works with Twoeyes — a “development team” — for about 18 months, then gets handed over to a management team formed to shape the business into a stable operating entity.
“We can only do about four deals per year because the work is so intensive,” Conor says. “We have to find deals with the high potential yield investors want, and a ‘skills gap’ that makes our participation worthwhile. If we can’t offer innovators any real assistance we say so and refer them to people who can.
“We risk as much as the innovator — although not in fees, necessarily. The venture capital community is very small in Australia and y...
