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Leo Linbeck III has a famous name around Houston: His family's business, Linbeck Construction Co., is plastered across construction projects all over the city, particularly in the Texas Medical Center. The Notre Dame-trained engineer has worked in the family business; started companies (including Warburg Pincus-backed, mid-sized theater developer NextStage Entertainment Corp., which went bust and was bought by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz in 2002); and taught at Rice University and Stanford business schools.
His latest gig: biotech. His company, AlphaDev LLC, is a pre-venture life science technology developer that has started six companies in Houston in the past 18 months. At a breakfast held by biotech booster BioHouston on Jan. 15, Linbeck said the reason he started AlphaDev was to help bridge the divide between inventions coming out of the Texas Medical Center and commercialization, a common problem around the Bayou City.
"I don't think the bottleneck is money. I think it's people," he said. "Companies aren't started by venture capitalists, they're started by entrepreneurs. We love technology and business. We like to create value but also capture that value."
Linbeck said his team screened 60 opportunities before selecting six companies to start and has several more under review. One of the startups, SEMMT Inc., has developed a new artificial heart for critically ill cardiac patients. The device was developed by Texas Heart Institute surgeons Billy Cohn - who was featured last year on the ABC series "Miracle Workers" - and Bud Frazier - who many call the heir to famous heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley. The two pump device has already been successfully implanted in a calf and cleared by the Food & Drug Administration.
"We hope to get it to market quickly for people who can't have valve replacement," Leo III said. It will be interesting to see if this latest Linbeck-backed idea flies. - Claire Poole
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Your approach to selection is right and teamed-up on right note, one of the companies could overtake others though all are equal on technology platforms.
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