Kidron Opportunity Fund I (KOFI) is a private equity fund launched by Kidron Corporate Advisors LLC. The fund will make global investments in a wide range of technology, media, telecom, consumer goods, educational and financial service companies. The fund intends to invest between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in up to 15 companies, typically as co-investments in larger financings of emerging growth companies having at least $1mm in revenue. The fund will consider investment at multiple stages of a company’s lifecycle, including venture capital financings of early revenue stage and later stage growth companies, private investment in public equity (PIPE) transactions, reverse merger transactions, and distressed situations.

Investment Criteria:

  • Size of investment: $100,000 to $1,000,000 in one or more rounds
  • Industry segments: technology, media, telecom, education, consumer goods and financial services
  • Geography: global, including the U.S., Asia, Eastern and Central Europe, and Israel
  • Types of investment: typically preferred stock in private companies or common stock in publicly traded companies; will consider debt with warrants or straight common stock in extraordinary situations
  • Stage: early revenue stage to later stage private companies, pre-IPO companies, small publicly traded companies, distressed companies

KOFI will be managed by four Managing Members, including the two managing directors of Kidron Corporate Advisors LLC and two outside professionals.
 
 
Jeffrey A. Fromm

Mr. Fromm is a partner in the Corporate & Securities Group at the law firm of Eiseman Levine in New York and a principal of MarketingWorks, a marketing, sales, research and consulting firm serving the education industry. In 2004, MarketingWorks acquired KnowledgeQuest Ventures, an education industry-focused financial and strategic advisory boutique that Mr. Fromm founded in 1998. Prior to founding KnowledgeQuest, Mr. Fromm served as Vice Chairman and General Counsel of Quadrant-Amroq Bottling Company Limited, the exclusive Pepsi-Cola, Lipton Iced Tea and PriGat bottler for the country of Romania, and a subsidiary of Quadrant Group, an international investment group. In 2005, Mr. Fromm represented Quadrant-Amroq in its sale of a 49% interest to PepsiAmericas, Inc., a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Fromm concentrates his law practice in the areas of venture capital, mergers & acquisitions and joint ventures both in the US and internationally, with a sub-specialty in educational product, service and technology companies. Mr. Fromm received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany, his J.D. from New York University School of Law, and his M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
 
 
Mark B. Segall

Mr. Segall founded Kidron Corporate Advisors LLC in 2003 and is a senior managing director. Prior to that, he was CEO of Investec Inc., the US investment banking operations of a multinational South African banking group that focused on emerging growth companies. Mr. Segall was a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, where he specialized in cross-border M&A and venture capital activities. Mr. Segall currently serves on the board of directors of Answers Corporation (Nasdaq: ANSW), the Escala Group (Nasdaq: ESCL), Comtech Group (Nasdaq: COGO) and Integrated Asset Management plc (AIM:IAM). Mr. Segall formerly served as director of siliconix Inc., an 80% subsidiary of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc (formerly, Nasdaq: SILI). Mr. Segall received his A.B. from Columbia University and his J.D. from New York University School of Law.
 
 
Byron N. Walker

Prior to joining KOFI, Mr. Walker was an executive director of equity research at UBS AG, a global investment bank. In that position he was instrumental in establishing the firm's worldwide semiconductor effort and was lead analyst coordinating global research for semiconductor production equipment. Companies under coverage included Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Novellus, Varian and a number of smaller US and foreign companies. Previous to that, he has held Managing Director equity analyst positions specializing in semiconductor production equipment at Banker's Trust, Alex.Brown and Needham and Company. Mr. Walker is a Wall Street Journal All-Star Analyst and an Institutional Investor's Home Run Hitter.

Mr. Walker also has extensive experience in debt financing and the ratings of technology companies, having worked in Chase Manhattan Bank as a technology lending Vice President and at Moody's Investors Service Technology Group as a Vice President and senior analyst. Technology companies covered included: IBM, Xerox, Unisys, Sun, Compaq, Wang, Intel, Texas Instruments and AMD. Mr. Walker received his BA from Yale University, and an MBA from NYU's Stern Business School.
 
 
Nicholas J. Wood

Mr. Wood is a senior managing director and partner of Kidron. Prior to joining Kidron, Mr. Wood was the founder and former CEO of Emosyn LLC, a fabless flash memory semiconductor company in the smart card and security space. The company was sold to Silicon Storage Technology in 2004. Emosyn went from being a start-up company to a profitable $40mm revenue company at the time of the sale. Prior to founding Emosyn, Mr. Wood was V.P Marketing for ATMI Inc, a semiconductor materials company. He currently serves on the board of directors of Aveso inc, a venture-backed display technology company, and iCard International, a security and smart card company. Mr. Wood also spent 10 years with Intel Corporation in Europe. He received his BSc (Honours) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.
 
 
Raphael L. Haas

Mr. Haas is an Associate at Kidron. Prior to joining Kidron, Mr. Haas was Director of Corporate Development of Integrated Asset Management plc, a global alternative investment group listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. While at Integrated, Mr. Haas was responsible for the M&A strategy of the business. Prior to Kidron, Mr. Haas worked at Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco-based investment bank. In this role Mr. Haas focused primarily on mergers and acquisitions and financings for companies in the media and telecommunications industries. Mr. Haas serves on the Board of Directors of: Attica Holdings (UK) Limited, and Attica International Portfolio Ltd. Mr. Haas graduated magna cum laude from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
 
Ashwin Uttamchandani

Mr. Uttamchandani was a Senior Analyst in the Information Management & Analytics Group for the Financial Services Industry at Ernst & Young LLP. Mr. Uttamchandani graduated with a B.S. (Honors) in Industrial Engineering with a concentration in Quantitative Finance from the P.C. Rossin School of Engineering at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
 
Representative Transactions of the KOFI Investment Management Team:
  • Emosyn LLC - sale to SST for over $20 million
  • Quadrant-Amroq Bottling Company - Romanian bottler of Pepsi, Lipton and Prigat beverages, sold to PepsiAmericas for over $100 million
  • Comtech Group - reverse merger into public shell
  • Xicor Inc. - equity investment by ATMI: $12 million return in one year
Recent Investments:
 
 
Storewiz, Inc.

Storewiz, Inc. is a leading provider of innovative online storage compression solutions that dramatically boost storage space on network storage environments. Storewiz enables organizations to maximize their storage infrastructure in a business reality of continuous growth in storage demands for a fraction of their current cost. The solution, based on a plug-and-play appliance acting as an add-on to any storage system, provides real time and transparent compression.

Storewiz appliances have been deployed in over 90 installations worldwide since product roll out in late 2005, covering diverse industries from banking to high tech and serving multiple international blue-chip customers.

www.storewiz.com
     
  Aveso, Inc.

Aveso, Inc. is a pioneer in the development of ultra thin, ultra low-power printed electronic displays produced using existing print manufacturing capacity. The Company’s low voltage, paper thin displays make it practical for the first time to integrate electronic displays into high-volume printed products such as credit cards and packaging labels. Aveso display devices are designed for integration into the global card and label manufacturing base and can be scaled cost-effectively in the hundreds of millions to billions of units. For more information, please visit

www.avesodisplays.com
     
  Cambrios Technologies Corp.

Cambrios is currently focused on the development of electronic materials for the display industry. The company’s proprietary nanostructured materials can be deposited using existing production equipment to achieve enhanced performance of display devices and components at lower manufacturing cost. The company’s first product, a directly patternable, wet-processable transparent conductive film, is poised to replace the industry standard sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO). Subsequent products will leverage this technology to produce other functional films for display and thin films applications.

www.cambrios.com
     
 

Tutor.com

Tutor.com creates innovative, on demand homework help and tutoring services that connect students to a professional tutor online the moment they need help in math, science, social studies or English.  The Company’s network of over 1,300 professional tutors has delivered over 2 million one-to-one tutoring sessions. Tutor.com services include Tutor.com Direct, an on demand tutoring service for families and Live Homework Help, an after-school program offered at over 1,600 public libraries. Tutor.com also powers two statewide, governor-supported initiatives, HomeworkKansas and HomeworkAlabama. Tutor.com was named to Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Program for the New York Region in 2006 and honored as one of the 25 Best Small Companies for Women 2007 by Working Mother.

www.tutor.com
 
Copyright: Kidron Corporate Advisors LLC 2006