Meltdown miss called stroke of good luck

→Bill Aven, Aven Enterprises: It’s going to make our financing challenges harder, but from a long-range point of view, it’s one heck of an opportunity.”

→David Thomison, i2E: Many of our entrepreneurial companies rely on individual wealthy angel investors for start-up capital. The indirect end result of (the meltdown) will potentially over the next 12 months have an impact on our clients’ ability to raise private capital. As a result of that, what we are trying to do is probably advise our clients to be very prudent with any cash liquidity they have. You have to play the cards you are dealt.

→Tom Francis, i2E: Startup companies have trouble getting any kind of bank financing anyway. But sometimes they get to the point where they get some account receivables and so on and get a certain (credit) line. I think that’s evaporated. It just got tighter.

→Larry Kennedy, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: We’ve got two companies not quite ready to go out and raise money. But it’s certainly going to make it tougher all the way around, I’m sure. They will probably have to look for different sources.

Business Writer Jim Stafford