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| › | Sabbatical Gives NMSU Professor Insight into the World of Venture Capital |
| › | Successful Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist Lends His Expertise to NMSU Researchers |
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| David Durgin |
by Ellen Davis
Even as a student at NMSU, David Durgin had a bent for entrepreneurship. Shortly after earning his electrical engineering degree in 1967, Durgin left his job as an electronics designer at Sandia National Laboratories to start his own company. The company designed and manufactured electronic control devices for applications from manufacturing process control to automobile seat belt and electrical system interlocks.
Finding venture capital in New Mexico for high-tech companies in 1970 was nearly impossible.
“Our company was fairly successful technically, but it couldn’t get any capital,” Durgin says. He ended up joining forces with a larger company, which in turn was sold many years later to TRW, a leading aerospace company and manufacturer of automotive safety systems.
Durgin has spent the past 15 years trying to make sure that other New Mexico technology entrepreneurs don’t face the same obstacles he did.
Shortly before retiring as a senior partner with the worldwide consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton in 1990, Durgin made his first foray into the world of venture capital with the establishment of a technology commercialization company called Quatro Corp. Quatro Corp. and its investment arm, Quatro Ventures LLC, have helped start or expand 15 firms in New Mexico, and Durgin has served on the boards of several of those companies.
Three years ago, Durgin was asked to become a partner in Valley Ventures III, a $45 million venture capital fund that is based in Phoenix. In 2003, Durgin co-founded Verge, the first venture capital fund to focus totally on New Mexico. So far, Durgin and his five partners have raised about $10 million of their $15 million goal for the fund. Verge is working with entrepreneurs who have new ideas related to biotechnology, biomedicine, energy, information technology, electronics and industrial technologies.
Today, as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the College of Engineering, Durgin is working with the college and with the Arrowhead Center to help NMSU structure its approach to technology commercialization.
“NMSU is moving in a very exciting direction, but there is a real learning curve in understanding the journey from the laboratory to the marketplace,” Durgin says.
Durgin spent two days in February visiting with faculty members at NMSU who are developing technologies they think might have commercial potential. Durgin says the technologies he learned about were still not ready for the market, but he plans to keep in touch with the researchers he met.
In the meantime, MBA student Sara Pirayesh is doing an internship for Verge this semester out of the Arrowhead Center.
“The Arrowhead Center is the central hub for southern New Mexico entrepreneurs to come through,” Durgin says. “We want to be involved in that environment.”
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