Venture Capital and how to find, approach and work with VC firms

James Lee Sorenson
Vice-Chairman, Sorenson Development
CEO, Sorenson Media

James Lee Sorenson is a Keynote Speaker at the 2006 University Private Equity Summit.  He is also on the UVF Board of Directors.

James Lee Sorenson is a nationally recognized business leader and entrepreneur. A University of Utah graduate, Mr. Sorenson's early successes include founding Seagull Laboratories and establishing DataChem Laboratories, which is one of the nation's largest environmental testing laboratories and which helped pioneer today's multi-billion dollar environmental analytical chemistry industry.

Under Mr. Sorenson's leadership, Sorenson Real Estate is responsible for the development of innovative, high-quality commercial, retail and residential projects on more than 60,000 acres, most of which are located on Utah's populous Wasatch Front.

As CEO of Sorensen Medical, Mr. Sorenson develops innovative healthcare products, recently bringing to market an ambulatory medication "pain pump" that allows a patient to manage pain treatment at home without expert assistance.

Always striving to develop proprietary technologies that create new paradigms in industry, Sorenson Media, under Mr. Sorenson's direction, created the world's leading video compression technology, used by Apple Computer, Disney, MGM and a growing mass market. He then expanded this breakthrough technology by creating an Internet video-conferencing system inexpensive enough for use by small businesses and consumers. Today, Sorenson Communication provides Internet communication services such as the Sorenson Video Relay Service, which enables the deaf and hard-of-hearing to place calls to anyone via a videophone appliance, broadband connection and certified sign language interpreters. The service has won resounding praise and is experiencing tremendous consumer demand.

Mr. Sorenson's latest project is Sorenson Capital, a venture/buyout fund that focuses on small- to middle-size growth-oriented companies.

In 2003, the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business presented Mr. Sorenson with its Entrepreneurial Achievement Award, and Digital Media magazine recognized him as one of the 100 most influential people in digital media for 2004.

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