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Mike Glaicar, founder of TrueConnect in Holmdel, met with potential investors and made his best pitch. Michael L. Diamond, @mdiamondapp

NEWARK – AJ Jain is a world-class table tennis player who studied engineering at the University of Michigan and helped guide his family’s furniture business through the Great Recession.

But his task on a recent day was one of his greatest challenges yet: Convince venture capitalists to invest in Middletown-based Ongo Energy Spray, a product he is developing to give a quick jolt to the exhausted masses.

“I’m getting a chance to tell my story,” Jain said, taking a break from rapid-fire meetings with investors. “I’ve had some really good reactions. I’ve had some bad reactions. I shouldn’t say I’ve had any bad reactions. The only negative reaction I’ve had is, ‘This is not our space, good luck.’”

Jain was one of nearly two dozen New Jersey entrepreneurs who pitched their ideas to investors at Founders & Funders, a biannual event sponsored by the state Economic Development Authority.

The high-stakes meet-up at Newark Venture Partners here was timely. Reports began to emerge that Amazon wouldn’t place its second headquarters in Newark, depriving the state of the benefits of a massive corporate expansion.

Gov. Phil Murphy, who attended the event, downplayed the state’s chances at landing Amazon and said it’s time for New Jersey to become innovative again by fostering smaller companies that might not have name recognition, but have the potential to grow faster.

He alluded to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, who liked to say the secret to his success was skating to where the puck wasn’t.

“We had a state living in the old economy,” Murphy said. “We’ll never achieve our aspirations unless we go to where the puck is going.”

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Mike Glaicar can relate better than most. He was a minor league hockey player who’s career was cut short after a concussion.

Glaicar worked for six years in advertising sales before leaving to start TrueConnect,  a software company based at Bell Works in Holmdel that delivers client profiles to salespeople, ideally making it easier for them to build more personal relationships.

Glaicar has raised $450,000 so far and hoped to raise another $100,000 to help pay the three engineers he hired and begin to market the product.

The pressure should be on; Glaicar, 30, lives in Howell with his wife, Alyssa, and their 7-month-old son. Their second child is due in six weeks. 

Wouldn’t there have been a better time to leave his stable job for a start-up?

“It’s a crazy time, but what I tell founders is there’s probably no good time,” he said. “For me, the right time was having an idea that I was so extremely passionate about.“

See Glaicar talk more about the experience at Founders & Funders i the video above.

From old school to startups

New Jersey’s economy has been playing catchup for the better part of two decades.

The Garden State once could reliably depend on corporate stalwarts such as AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and Honeywell for high-paying jobs.

But the digital age hit fast. A new generation connected to their laptops and smart phones could work anywhere. They increasingly wanted to be in cities. And employers followed them, slowly abandoning their leafy suburban New Jersey campuses.

The impact? New Jersey’s economy grew on average just 0.3 percent a year from 2005 to 2015, compared with the U.S. average of 1.4 percent a year. Job growth and median income in the state barely budged, a 2017 report by McKinsey & Co. found.

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Murphy appears to have embraced McKinsey’s prescription to foster younger, faster-growing companies. For example, he wants to build more innovation centers to help startups grow without worrying about overhead like rent. And he wants to auction off tax credits to big companies and use the proceeds to create a venture capital fund.

Murphy has latched onto a Chris Christie-era idea, too.

Founders & Funders began in 2012 after EDA officials grew frustrated. They would meet entrepreneurs who were developing gee-whiz ideas, only to hear from investors that their weren’t enough opportunities for them in New Jersey, said Kathleen Coviello, the EDA’s vice president of technology and life sciences investments.

The idea was to bring them together in one place twice a year in a combination of “Shark Tank” and speed-dating.

Founders meet with investors for 10 minutes, then move on to the next one, getting the practice and connections, if not the money, they need to make a go of it.

Not everyone is applauding. With Amazon and Google reportedly signing on to expand in New York, Republican state Senators Tom Kean Jr. and Steven Oroho said Thursday that New Jersey needed to lower its taxes so it wouldn’t miss out on another big employer.

“Gov. Murphy’s efforts to grow an innovative economy need to be more than just rhetoric,” Kean said.

But at least one investor at the Newark conference said the state’s economic strategy is on the right track.

“There are absolutely enough companies and there are some excellent quality companies, too,” Zev Scherl, a partner at Double18 Capital based in Fort Lee, said in between meetings. “We’re well positioned to take off right now. That’s what I would say.”

Solid business plan, strong stomach

Executives submit a two-page summary to the EDA and are assigned a point person who coaches them. They can only participate once, so they need to be ready for prime time, Coviello said.

What do investors look for? Entrepreneurs should be passionate about their idea, have a strong team, and know the market they want to attack, said Joanne Lin, senior investment associate with Newark Venture Partners, a venture capital fund that specializes in business-to-business technology companies.

“One of the big things I think early-stage entrepreneurs maybe don’t have enough focus on is sales execution and strategy,” Lin said. “And that’s where we find a little bit of lack of knowledge.”

For the new economic strategy to work, though, the state needs risk takers.

The odds aren’t great; 10 percent of companies that have participated in Founders & Funders have gone on to raise capital, Coviello said.

But no one, after hearing that statistic, got up and left. They think the world — or their state, or simply their community — needs their idea.

Gregory Hough is starting Yazzer, a Ewing-based company that wants to deliver gasoline and fill up your car. Dr. Ashwin Patel is starting InquisitHealth, a River Edge-based company that is making technology to help patients connect with peers who have gone through similar health struggles.

And AJ Jain is starting Ongo, a company making an energy supplement that you carry in your pocket, spritz three times on your tongue, and get the same jolt as a cup of coffee or a small Red Bull.

Jain, 38, lives in Colts Neck with his wife, Misha, and their sons, Kavish, 8, and Devansh, 6. He has a stellar resume that includes chairing the anti-doping division for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

With young children, though, he couldn’t get enough sleep. He would awake groggy, desperate for caffeine. He wished he didn’t have to go through the motions of making coffee or guzzling an energy drink.

Jain decided to leave his family’s furniture store a little more than a year ago, and, with his savings, work with scientists to perfect the formula. He is getting ready to test the product at several local 7-Eleven stores, he said.

He admitted during his first meeting with investors in Newark that he didn’t quite know what they were looking for. He listened to their advice. And then he launched into his pitch, hoping to raise $350,000 to $500,000.

Nobody swooped in that day to give him a lifeline. But they didn’t yawn either.

“I’ve gone through different struggles and developed a sense of confidence that if something is really difficult, I’ll figure it out,” Jain said.

Michael L. Diamond; @mdiamondapp; 732-643-4038; mdiamond@gannettnj.com

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