Peak interest.

• Author: Manuel, John
• Position: North Carolina Technological Development Authority - Capital

Few people would be likely to argue with the aims of the North Carolina Technological Development Authority, a state agency that opened for business in 1984.

TDA, as it is called, has noble goals. It is supposed to take state money and invest it in start-up companies trying to develop new technologies. From new technologies, the logic goes, spring new jobs.

Of course, getting from start-up to stability isn't easy, and in its short lifetime TDA has had its share of growing pains and experienced its share of criticism.

Words such as "usury" and the more polite "unreasonable" fly from the mouths of some entrepreneurs who have gotten venture financing from TDA.

Then again, the business people who uttered those words took the money. They had no choice. No self-respecting, bottom-line bank would fork over the cash.

And therein lies the balancing act that TDA Director Brent Lane and his four assistants perform as they run an agency with an annual budget of $1.5 million.

"We're basically doing something here that private financiers have found too risky, [making] early-stage investments in technology-based companies," says Lane, 31, a former geologist who joined TDA in 1984 and became director in 1988. "Our objective is to try and get these companies to a point where they will become attractive to private investors."

TDA makes two kinds of investments. It will invest between $30,000 and $100,000 in a company whose chief goal is to prove that a technology works. After that, a company can go for a bigger investment of between $50,000 and $200,000 to see if the technology sells.

From that point, it is sink or swim.

So far, TDA has financed 47 companies working on a wide range of products and projects: sophisticated computer graphics, nematode-extermination techniques, poultry-house environmental controls and automated shellfish dredges.

"We're not just interested in high technology," says Lane, whose yearly salary is $45,000. "A lot of our best investments involve technological innovations in traditional industries. One of the reasons for this is that the product life in high technology tends to be short, as little as two or three years. A product innovation in a traditional industry may bring you returns for 20 years or more."

Entrepreneurs anxious to get TDA money must clear some bureaucratic hurdles.

TDA relies on outside experts to review proposals for their technological merit. The agency also calls upon bankers, financiers, lawyers, accountants...