Eno River Capital

Economic Development

Economic Development through Technology Commercialization: A Proven Track Record of Success

In 1997, Dr. Charles Hamner and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (“NCBC”) selected Eno River Capital in a competition to manage the North Carolina Bioscience Investment Fund (“NCBIF”). This innovative $26 million public-private venture partnership, anchored with a $10 million appropriation from the North Carolina General Assembly, is designed to serve three key regional economic development goals, without sacrificing market rates of return for its public and private investors:

  1. To commercialize life science technologies developed at North Carolina’s public and private Universities by creating new, locally-based venture-backed Companies;
  2. To create new, high-paying jobs for North Carolinians; and
  3. To attract additional investment capital into North Carolina from later-stage institutional venture investors.

By any of these three measures, NCBIF has proved a tremendous success. To date, NCBIF:

  1. Has helped launch ten NCBIF Portfolio Companies -- based on technologies out of Duke, ECU, NC State, UNC, and Wake Forest University. Seven of the ten would either have been started out-of-state or not at all but for the hands-on operational contributions of Eno River Capital, which assisted in University technology licensing, wrote Business Plans, recruited key management, and organized and led the first institutional financings.
  2. The ten NCBIF Portfolio Companies have created over 500 new jobs in North Carolina, at an average salary of over $60,000/year.
  3. The ten NCBIF Portfolio companies have raised approximately $100 million in syndications and follow-on financing in the first five years of the Fund’s life – “leverage” of approximately 5:1 on the original NCBIF investment.

The collaboration between Eno River Capital, which manages NCBIF, and the non-profit North Carolina Biotechnology Center, which oversees North Carolina’s investment in NCBIF, is generally acknowledged as one of the most innovative and successful economic-development oriented public-private partnerships in the country.

The Eno River/NCBC/NCBIF structure is considered a model for other states attempting similar initiatives.