Binoptics Corporation

The Company

BinOptics Corporation is a privately held high tech start up company located in Cornell's Business and Technology Park in Ithaca, NY. BinOptics, the company, was based on key technological inventions made at Cornell University. CEO and co-founder, Alex Behfar, worked on the proprietary technology under Professor Valentine during his student tenure at Cornell, while earning his PhD in Electrical Engineering. In November 2000 CEO, Alex Behfar and President, Darius Forghani founded BinOptics. BinOptics received its first round of venture capital funding in January 2001 for an undisclosed amount. Currently, BinOptics houses over twenty employees and they hope to grow to forty by the end of the fiscal year. BinOptics is now in its fourth year of operation and will amassed $2 million in annual revenue. So what does BinOptics produce?

BinOptics designs, develops, and manufactures monolithically integrated optoelectronic components based on the proprietary technology developed at Cornell University. It also produces integrated photonic components, which include its lasers. These components can be integrated into indium phosphide and other semiconductor materials, which give BinOptics a competitive advantage. This unique platform allows the company to meet commercial requirements with higher reproducibility, more elasticity for product innovation, considerably lower costs, and higher performance than alternative processes. BinOptics' products address high growth datacom applications, parallel optical interconnects, PON and CWDM (Coarse Wave Division Multiplexing), as well as advanced non-telecom applications. Its products are sold to technology companies in the tele-communications and data-communications industry. BinOptics does not disclose its customer list but two of its customers are Agilent Technologies and Cisco Systems.

What does this mean? In the simplest way, BinOptics produces lasers. These tiny lasers, some the size of a grain of salt, transfer enormous amounts of information to another source immediately. The integrated laser chips are the key part of optical transceivers and transponders. BinOptics' edge-emitting laser consists of a two-inch wafer that has 20,000 lasers on it.

Strategic Investors

BinOptics success can be measured by the strength of its strategic investors. These investors facilitate BinOptics path to success and its ability to raise equity. After receiving its initial first round of funding in January 2001 BinOptics was able to receive additional venture capital funding in May 2002, March 2003, and February 2005. The strategic investors include: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Cayuga Venture Fund II, FA Technology Ventures, and ArrowPath Venture Capital and Stanford University. Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a leading venture capital firm out of Silicon Valley, CA. It has a global network of affiliated funds with $3 billion in capital commitments. Cayuga Venture Fund (CVF) II is located in Ithaca, NY. CVF has many connections with Cornell University and prides itself on its management team. FA Technology Ventures is a venture capital firm located in Albany, NY and Boston, MA. ArrowPath Venture Capital is a venture capital firm located in Redwood Shores, CA. All four of these investors participated in BinOptics most recent round of funding. This $10 million Series B round of financing took place in February 2005.

Alan Morrow

Our group had the pleasure of speaking with Alan Morrow from BinOptics. Alan joined BinOptics in early 2003 and is the Vice President of Technology Development. He was very helpful in informing us about BinOptics and explaining