Capital match-making is high-tech at Comdex

David E. Kalish

Tuesday, June 3, 1997 | 11:32 a.m.

ATLANTA -- Wanted: Bright-eyed dreamer with attractive figures, sexy concept and a passion for the Internet seeks a sugar daddy.

If the technology industry played the personal ads, this one could sum up the curious sideshow unfolding here this week, alongside one of the computer world's biggest trade events.

Starting Monday, some 50 high-tech companies were in town to flirt with venture capital firms, investment bankers and corporate investors in a sort of financial beauty contest -- a big-bucks mating dance for those with money to burn and those with the fire to burn it.

The entrepreneurs mostly are in Internet businesses, with offbeat names like CyberGold, CDnow, ICast and Voxware. They're making their case for why their money-losing private firms are worth the investment.

Some are barely hanging on, looking to cover the rent. Others seek to expand, with dreams of becoming the next Netscape, the World Wide Web browser company that came from nowhere last year to launch one of the most popular initial stock offers of all time.

And they hope the Comdex Venture Forum in Atlanta -- off-site from the far larger computer and consumer electronics Comdex show that is sponsoring it -- will help them get there.

"You write a business plan, then you make an appointment. You shake a lot of hands and tell stories," said Nat Goldhaber of CyberGold Inc., a California software marketing Internet advertising.

CyberGold is near completion of a $4 million round of financing on top of its initial capital investment, but Goldhaber says he hasn't drawn a salary since starting the firm two years ago.

Capital match-making conferences have become commonplace since the Web, with all its money-making potential, exploded on the scene a few years ago.

But the separate venture capital forum is a first for the giant Comdex show, whose spring event expects to draw about 110,000 retailers, corporate technology managers and others to the 3,000 displays on the floor of the Georgia World Congress Center.

The event combines two trade giants for the first time -- the Comdex and Consumer Electronics shows -- reflecting the convergence of high-tech gear such as computers with traditional consumer electronics equipment such as television sets.

Featured products include TVs that enable people to surf the Internet and hook into their computers. There are also stripped-down computers for cost-conscious businesses that download information across the Internet or corporate networks cheaply.

Ironically, many of the companies at the heart of the high-tech world's explosive growth won't be featured on the main show floor because they can't can't afford the $4,500 fee to rent even the smallest 10-by-10-foot booth.