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| Sunday, June 05, 2005 |
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| Angels to the rescue |
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By Michael Levensohn
Goshen – The first client of Orange County's new angel investor network is a former IBMer looking to capitalize on something he invented in his garage.
No kidding.
Tony DiMarco left Big Blue in 2000 to develop a "personal career-management tool" that he thinks will change the way companies recruit and develop employees.
His company is called NavAgility LLC, and its product allows users to create a "career view," a fancy name for a Web-based resume that maps work experience, skills, training and other information against a timeline.
He works out of an office built into half of what had been a two-car garage at his Poughkeepsie home.
The company makes money two ways: It charges schools and businesses for the use of the program by their graduates and employees, and bills recruiters for access to the thousands of career views NavAgility has already collected and the tens of thousands to come.
DiMarco's problem? Collecting enough resumes to make the product valuable to recruiters takes time and money, two resources that are running short five years after he began the business.
As DiMarco put it, "I'm motivated to get out of my garage."
Enter the Orange County Angel Network.
It's an offshoot of the Orange County Capital Development Corp., which is itself a stepchild of the Orange County Partnership, the county's economic development arm.
Bob Hannan, managing director of Orange County Capital Development, developed the network when he realized that venture capital firms weren't interested in funding the fledgling businesses OCCDC was attracting.
"Venture capital guys like to do deals $3 million and up," said Hannan. "Most of the deals we looked at were a quarter-million to $1.5 million."
Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals ($1 million or more in Orange County's case, not counting real estate holdings) who invest in start-up companies at an early stage, typically after the founder has exhausted friends and family, but before venture firms get involved.
The Orange County Angel Network was born at a dinner in November at the swank Powelton Club in Balmville. Hannan got 35 people together and has since collected more than a dozen commitments.
At a second dinner in mid-May, DiMarco made his pitch and, after some negotiation, walked away with $150,000, a few new partners and a mandate to relocate his business to Orange County.
That should happen this fall, DiMarco said, since the company is rapidly outgrowing his home.
Right now, the company has three full-time employees, and it outsources marketing and some development functions. Clients include the continuing education programs at NYU and Boston University.
The next step is to hire a sales force and take the company national.
"We think we can be $25 million or more (in sales) in three years," DiMarco said.
NavAgility just landed the Orange County Partnership – the step-grandparent of the angel network – as a client.
"My goal is to identify the talent pool we have here in Orange County that we don't even know about. We don't really know who our commuters are," said Maureen Halahan, CEO of the Partnership and a member of Capital Development's board of directors.
Halahan hopes to use the information gleaned from commuters' career views to attract high-end employers.
So, one way or another, this business born in a Poughkeepsie garage figures to help Orange County create jobs.
Key NavAgility differences
NavAgility President Tony DiMarco points to several key differences between his business model and what other job sites offer.
NavAgility targets professionals who have college degrees.
NavAgility's "career view" allows participants to examine the career paths of other people, which makes it useful for individual and corporate career development programs.
Unlike resume-posting job sites, which target only people who are looking for work, NavAgility targets both active and passive job-seekers – people who aren't currently looking for work, but who may attract job offers from recruiters who see their career views.
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