Rich in intellectual capital but saddled with attitudes that get in the way of leveraging it, Wisconsin needs to change its culture. So says G. Steven Burrill, the chief executive officer at Burrill & Co., a San Francisco venture capital firm whose funds invest nearly $1 billion in life sciences companies.
Burrill says he isn’t buying the state’s standard argument – that it lacks the kind of capital available on the coasts to fund new companies.
“There is more than enough capital in the world to do all the things that need to happen here, you just need to go get it,” said Burrill, who sponsors an annual business plan competition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “If you had thousands of great business plans on every street corner in Madison, all the capital in the world would get pretty tired of flying here and they’d set up shop here.”
Burrill & Co. would invest its funds’ entire $1 billion in Wisconsin companies if the opportunities were there, said Burrill, a Madison native who went to UW-Madison and has a vacation home in the state.