The Spring Team (www.springteam.com)

The Spring Team manufactures specialty springs, the kind used in flashlights, ATM machines, etc. Eagle Ventures and its partners purchased the Spring Team in 1990 when the Company had about $2 million of revenue and 25 employees. It operated out of a former gas station, having been started about 15 years before.

Over a period of seven years, Eagle and its partners invested about a million and a half dollars in new automated CNC equipment, built a single floor, 15,000 square-foot facility, hired professional management, created a formalized sales and marketing effort, became ISO compliant, purchased an Enterprise Resource Planning software system, and grew the Company to about $5 million of revenue and 60 employees.

In 1997, Eagle and its partners sold the Company back to management, the team that had really led the growth, and tripled its investment. Subsequently, the Spring Team built an adjacent 15,000 square foot facility and is prosperous today.

Cardiac Telecom Corporation (www.cardiactelecom.com)

In 1990, Eagle Ventures and its partners founded Cardiac Telecom Corporation, along with an inventor who had the idea to have a cardiac monitoring system that would have the same accuracy and instant alert capability as that of an intensive care units, except that it was to be used in the home. Cardiac Telecom took eight years to get through the FDA, instead of an expected 90 days. After being cleared for use in the home by the FDA, instead of having automatic Medicare approval, Cardiac had to endure a nearly one-year appeal process trying to get approved for reimbursement.

At the end of that process, having proved its efficacy in home monitoring, Cardiac Telecom had a Medicare policy written specifically for its services, with an approved Medicare reimbursement level for the Company. Having a new Medicare Policy created for a particular medical device is somewhat unusual.

Initially, Cardiac was led by its scientific founder, Dr. Alois Langer. In 2002, Dr. Langer was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work in having been the principal designer and builder of the implantable defibrillator (the device in Vice President Cheney's chest.) Subsequently, the Company was led by another individual until July 2007, when it went into a 'turnaround mode.' See the Wall Street Journal article.

After the Company went into the home monitoring marketplace, it struggled for a year attempting to "cross the chasm" with its units being used by a number of Pittsburgh-area physicians. It is now experiencing increasing, prosperous success.

Cardiac's system is the only home-based, 24/7, real-time cardiac surveillance system approved for reimbursement by Medicare. It allows physicians to dramatically (80% clinical yield vs. 10-20% for holters and event recorders) increase their ability to diagnose patients experiencing hard-to-diagnose syncope (fainting).

After extensive review by Medicare of PA, Cardiac had specific policies written by Medicare of Pa and Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Western PA providing for reimbursement coverage for seven days to start, increasing to fourteen days at the reasonable request of the physician. It is patient-friendly, and accurately and automatically detects, and automatically communicates in near real-time, both asymptomatic (not felt) and symptomatic cardiac events to Cardiac's monitoring center.

"This is the most amazing service. You have helped us tremendously in diagnosing our patients to achieve better outcomes. Thank you."...a cardiologist, who with partners, has a very large practice (@10,000 patients), in the Pittsburgh area, after having used our home monitoring/diagnostic service several times.

Cardiac's patent is broad and we expect a bright future for this company once it recovers from its ‘turnaround mode.'

DAWAR Technologies (www.Dawar.com)

In 1997, Eagle Ventures and its partners acquired DAWAR Technologies, a 115 year-old company located in Pittsburgh. The Company was on the top three floors of an eighty year-old, eight story building. It had historically been a print shop. Upon acquisition, it was printing membrane switches (electrical touch pads like those found on microwave ovens) by screen- printing electrically-conductive ink on polycarbonate plastic.

Since the acquisition, the Company hired a number of professional manager, created a formalized sales and marketing process/program, moved to a single-floor, 12,000 square foot facility and is in the process of converting most of its operations over to automated equipment. Eagle and its partners brought in professional management, acquired an Enterprise Resource Planning management information system and expanded its product offerings. The Company now manufactures membrane switches, touchscreens and smart cards and is the sole supplier to a number of companies in the Pittsburgh area. Among its customers for smart cards is the largest medical device manufacturer in Pittsburgh. See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.

Dawar Technologies received Certification to ISO 9001:2000, Without Design Standards.

In 2006, its revenue grew by 70% of the prior year. In 2007, it has an annualized revenue run-rate of more than $10 million and is very profitable.

Other Eagle Ventures' Investments

Allegheny Container, a corrugated box company, is still owned after eight years generating significant gross margins and profits. Its story is similar to that of DAWAR Technologies.

VEC Technologies (www.VecTechnology.com) is a startup funded with eleven million dollars by Eagle and its partners. After five years in the startup/initial market penetration phase, it was sold by Eagle and its partners to Genmar, the largest boat manufacturer in the world. Genmar is now rolling out VEC's advanced manufacturing technology to the rest of its manufacturing plants, having built a Greenfield plant to test out and use VEC's advanced manufacturing automated approach for manufacturing large diameter fiberglass boat hulls. See Fortune magazine for a detailed article on the VEC system, Heroes of U.S. Manufacturing (refer to the third part of the article.)