Maine’s startup ecosystem relies heavily on MTI and its leader
Photo / Jim Neuger
Brian Whitney, president of Maine Technology Institute, is at the center of Maine’s startup infrastructure.
Brian Whitney has served as president of Maine Technology Institute since 2015. MTI, as it is known, is part of the funding network that includes the Finance Authority of Maine and the Maine Venture Fund. Each serves its own role in the process of cultivating startups and, ultimately, companies that will create workforces and help drive the economy. Mainebiz talked with him about how MTI fits into the larger funding “ecosystem” in Maine.
Mainebiz: What is MTI’s elevator pitch?
Brian Whitney: MTI’s core mission is to help diversify and grow Maine’s economy by helping to accelerate innovation and its transformation into new products, services and companies, ultimately creating quality jobs for Maine people.
MB: How is Maine’s funding “ecosystem” designed to work between Maine Technology Institute, the Finance Authority of Maine and Maine Venture Fund?
BW: Maine has a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem and, while my perspective is obviously biased, I view MTI as the lynchpin. From a funding standpoint, we are generally getting involved when the risk is the greatest, prior to our other partners. To paraphrase a quote from Steve Case’s book “The Third Wave,” I view our role as fostering an environment where innovation thrives by helping mitigate risk and expand the scale of opportunity. We are working with innovators early, whether creative teams in garages or R&D arms of more mature companies, to get their innovations to market, generate recurring revenues, and help them graduate to other more traditional sources of funding like FAME, banks or venture capital.
MB: How does MTI determine whether a startup needs a grant, a loan or an investment?
BW: It really depends on the situation. Several years ago, we adopted a venture investment readiness tool developed by Village Capital that helps us determine what level of funding we are comfortable investing. Our board adopted a policy whereby we are willing to take greater risk with lower dollar amounts and less risk with larger dollar amounts. So, depending upon how high a level an innovation falls on our readiness scale, the more grant, loan, or equity funding an entity might receive. We are looking at things like the skills and experience of the team involved, value proposition, market potential and the ability to scale and generate economic impact (jobs, revenue generation, leveraged investment). It is also important to note that MTI requires that our award recipients have some skin in the game. So, our funding level is also determined by how much matching funding our applicants can generate. We require them to match our funding dollar for dollar.
MB: What are some of the success stories that have come out of MTI?
BW: I adhere to the philosophy that you should celebrate what you want to see more of. So, we spend time each month recognizing, through our eNewsletter and website, our MTI successes. Covetrus is probably our unicorn. We invested just over 10 years ago when the company was just its two founders. It is now a publicly traded company headquartered in Portland with over 6,000 employees across the globe. More recent success stories include STARC Systems, whose founders met at an MTI networking event; the company now employs more than 80 people. VETRO is growing rapidly and is poised to become the next WEX or IDEXX. Other emerging MTI success stories include bluShift Aerospace, DAVO Technologies, Running Tide, Flowfold, Good To-Go, MedRhythms, KinoTek, and Literacy Tech, to name just a few.
MB: How has MTI created accountability among loan recipients, so they treat the funding as a loan and not a grant?
BW: We actively manage our loan portfolio through quarterly reporting updates to ensure that projects are making progress and our award contracts have safeguards to ensure the accountability of awardees. All our loans have repayment obligations, which is a bit of a departure from an old MTI award vehicle, the Development Loan, that was phased out in 2018. That product was essentially a grant that converted to debt if the project was successful, obviously creating a bit of a disincentive to claiming success. Under our current funding process, once an entity reaches a cumulative $100,000 in grant funding from MTI, they then move into a return vehicle (debt or equity) if seeking additional funding from us.
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MTI is an integral part of growing new technologies and new jobs here in Maine. It also has very capable staff and leadership with Brian Whitney at the helm. Maine is fortunate to have MTI and Mr. Whitney working on these initiatives.
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