Fluid Innovation Debuts VirtualVentures.com, Web Community Designed to Commercialize Real Technology

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) September 24, 2007 -- Fluid Innovation is launching, Virtual Ventures, the first virtual game that lets players act as venture capitalists and predict the success or failure of real technologies. Executives from Fluid Innovation will present Virtual Ventures on Tuesday, September 25 at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego.

* Fluid Innovation unveiled Virtual Ventures (http://www.virtualventures.com), the first virtual game that lets players act as venture capitalists and predict the success or failure of real technologies.

* Virtual Ventures works like other online prediction games, such as Fantasy Football. However, it is more than a game - it is a marketplace where leading enterprise companies will license or sell real technologies developed in their R&D labs or IT department to independent software vendors or venture capitalists. It is open to anyone, but is targeted at technology enthusiasts, including developers, product managers and professional investors.

? It works like this:

* In each "investment round" Virtual Ventures will place technologies from its enterprise clientele into the market for review.

* Participants research these technologies - as any venture capitalist would - within an investment window.

* After making their investments, participants can discuss their investment strategy as well as predictions with other participants.

* The technologies are then published in the Virtual Ventures marketplace along with their aggregate investor reviews for the consideration of prospective buyers and licensees.

* The site tracks every technology through the commercialization process and then tallies the winning investors and ranks them on the leader board.

* The objective is to provide a crowd perspective of the value of technology and drive the commercialization of the application to a relevant independent software vendor (ISV) which can bring it to market.

* Software industry experts estimate that U.S. companies spend $75B annually developing internal software programs, creating the driving force behind the creating of this product.

* Chris McKinzie, CEO of Fluid Innovation will present Virtual Ventures, along with Paulo Vieira, Vice President of Technology, at the DEMOfall conference on Tuesday, September 25 at 10 a.m. PDT. Throughout the remainder of DEMOfall, Fluid Innovation will be in the Pavilion station #44 to conduct live product demonstrations.

Quotes:

"Fluid Innovation has created a fun and engaging way to address a very real market opportunity around internally developed intellectual property," said Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO events. "Virtual Ventures allows you to be a virtual VC while playing a real role in bringing new and innovative products to market. It may be the first fantasy game that companies encourage their IT staff to play."

"We are excited to be working with Fluid Innovation and its novel approach to Intellectual Asset management," said Louis Carbonneau, general manager for the Intellectual Property Licensing Group of Microsoft. "Microsoft is a significant investor in research and development and we strongly believe that IP is a driver of innovation, opportunity and competitiveness. Virtual Ventures will help bring greater innovation and economic opportunity to the marketplace and contribute to building a more vibrant IT ecosystem."

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