There’s GOLD in them’dar hills! Technology Gold That Is

Date:  Tue, 2000-02-01

Like the Forty-Niners of California’s gold rush, CIT clients are pioneers who chart their way through undiscovered territory. Based in Charlottesville and the rolling hills of Virginia’s Piedmont, M·CAM is a CIT pioneer preparing to blaze new trails through the banking world. Utilizing an ingenious financial model, M·CAM’s software prodcut will set a new “gold standard” for technology financing. David Martin, the founder and chairman of Mosaic Technologies, Inc. (Mosaic), created M·CAM in January 1998. Shortly after M·CAM’s formation, Martin outlined his revolutionary concept to CIT’s regional director in Charlottesville, Terry Woodworth. “Extraordinary ideas and innovations are often based on an entrepreneur’s ability to view a concept or process from an angle that has never been contemplated before,” says Woodworth. Impressed with Martin’s visionary idea, Woodworth helped M·CAM apply and win a CIT Innovation award. The result was the development of software for M·CAM’s First Dollar product. M·CAM’s First Dollar service utilizes a software program that electronically standardizes the intellectual property valuation process. The revolutionary software allows lending institutions to use patents, trademarks, copyrights and trades secrets as collateral. In the simplest terms, the software provides a systematic process for evaluating intangible assets and the risk involved in financing that asset. The CIT Innovation Award that helped create the software system in partnership with M·CAM and the University of Virginia (UVA) will serve to benefit universities in the future as well. This strategic partnership between CIT, M·CAM and UVA also opens up the possibility for addressing the issue of how universities determine what technologies are or are not licensable. Martin firmly believes that CIT provided M·CAM with a great deal more than just financial assistance. “CIT opened up a relationship between the university system and private industry. Money would have been of little value without the development of that relationship.” With CIT’s assistance, M·CAM has transferred the detailed, complex and time-consuming process of asset evaluation to electronic form. Although the program provides absolute rules for valuing assets, it still allows human experience to intervene in the electronic process. “This isn’t about hunches,” says Martin, “it’s based on standardized processes. Everything about this product is risk management.” The strategic partnership with CIT has helped M·CAM hit the mother lode. With their unique software approach to risk management the company is projecting $14 million in productivity savings over the next three years, based on administrative cost reductions and man-hours saved. Additionally, in the same three-year period, M·CAM is projecting $47 million in competitiveness and approximately seven new jobs. M·CAM is this century’s leader of a new gold rush, and in the process of mapping unexplored territory, First Dollar has the capability to revolutionize the financial lending industry.