My mantra of investing, as any regular reader of this column knows, is capital begets capital. That's why Oklahoma's unique, pre-seed capital fund, Technology Business Finance Program (TBFP), is so critical to Oklahoma's innovation economy.
TBFP deploys state funding to provide equity-free capital for startups at such an early stage that there are virtually no other sources of capital available. TBFP is not intended to grain a percentage of the entrepreneur's company in return for capital. Its sole purpose is to help entrepreneurs fund the first milestones toward building and de-risking their companies with the aim of attracting additional capital from equity investors as milestones are met.
