Seventeen new companies, fourteen potential funders, one reporter, and a Congressman. It was a great start for Princeton Job Creation Forum’s first speed dating session, aiming to create companies to create jobs in New Jersey, on Tuesday, January 26. Princeton University hosted the three-hour marathon at the Friend Center, led by an all-volunteer team, led by David Sandahl of Decision Consulting, along with Drew Marshall of Primed Associates, Star Wilmuth, Len Newton, and Karen Jezierny.

“There’s so much energy in this room!” exclaimed Jezierny, director of public affairs at the university. And there was. Every five minutes the funders had to move to the next table. I hovered, and when there was a free presenter, plopped myself down and started interviewing. At risk of truncating info to inaccuracy, here’s some of what I found:

Caliper’s Herb Greenberg, with Rick Roman, pitched a re-do of Greenberg’s free service “Vet Career Connect” matching jobs with competencies needed, based of course on the applicants taking Caliper’s famous test. Greenberg is looking for a database partner. Companies will pay less to list their jobs than on major job boards, but they would get the added value of applicant test results. The unemployed would pay nothing.

Ray Ingram, a serial entrepreneur in the learning space, has a new firm, Dathil, that offers Adult Literacy Using Enhanced Recognition, a Software as a Service to make adult literacy training more economical. He’s looking for $250k seed money, and developers to finish the remaining 20 percent.

John Hartmann, an alumnus of Merck, looked to Hungary for polymer technology and his ElizaNor Polymer LLC, which uses Hyaluronic acid to make a skin care product that sounded to me as if it could be the next Neostrata. Also a product for cancer patients, and a revolutionary one for wound management that uses blue light to convert a liquid to a solid that disappears.

The GamerCast guys, Louis Eagan and Jeff Paytas, with their Fox Rothschild attorney Daniel Madrid, are looking for $100,000 to promote their live streaming user broadcasts of video games that involve celebrity athletes. I recognized only the name of Mia Hamm the women’s soccer champion on their roster but I’m an illiterate sports observer. This company is located mostly in Las Vegas.

Whereas Green Earth Power Systems is very very local, the brainchild of serial entrepreneur Roger Bessler. He sold one company to start this one. One of his ideas, to use his Sarnoff-honed expertise to make Household “E-Pods” powered by solar and natural gas, supplying electric for electric vehicle charging, house heating, and cooling from a thermal cell. It’s quite a story.

So is the Larry Richards story, explained in a previous article in U.S. 1 Newspaper. With him, Richards brought George Hannah, former finance director of the City of Trenton, and Herbert Bright, retired from Nabisco. Their Trenton Information Management Company (TIMCO, pictured above) has a good chance of bringing $2 million in revenue next year and at least 200 Trenton jobs.

Dimitry Paramanov retired from his job as director of global access at Bristol-Myers Squibb to start MED-IN-TOUCH, using Internet and wireless technologies to improve patient medication compliance in the clinical trials space. He outsources the R&D; to MPR Engineering.

A real change of pace: a movie producer, Joe Seldner, is looking for funds to produce Operation Pedro Pan, a Cuban immigration saga. Seldner is already working with Paramount on a Ripley documentary and one with the McCloskey ministries.

John Nash’s RadioSurgery Partners was a bit of a ringer because it’s based in Timonium, Maryland, but it partners with hospitals like St. Peter’s and Cooper Medical Center. It packages the latest technology (like Cyberknife) in an economical way.

Diena Seeger, vice president of operations at Viocare, tell of the companies personalized wellness technology ecosystem, too long to explain here but you may know it as Princeton Living Well. Viocare, founded by Rick Weiss, is looking for money for sales, marketing, and branding efforts.

Chris Tyrrell and Gerald O’Donnell, former Wall Streeters, want to do their part in changing the world by selling energy-efficient lighting technologies to warehouse owners at Exit 8A. Their firm, Carnegie Center-based Right Energies LLC, will partner with a mid-west manufacturer and offer no-up-front-cost financing.

Others represented: Joseph Calabro of Pathlink LLC in Red Bank; Mario Gonzalez of Princeton Pathology Services at 20 Nassau Street (he has a gynecological medical device); Raj Malhotra’s Precise Solutions Inc. (software for electronic medical records) in East Brunswick; Medford’s TCMG offering eco-friendly, LEED-certified American made cabinets and countertops.

The most unusual technology, and the most well-organized presentation, was Regeneco LLC, which aims to gather up all of New Jersey’s old tires and, with a gasifying process, convert them into electricity and saleable scrap steel. Jerome Block, Ulf Hansson, and Nicholas Hegedus seem to have all the answers: the process doesn’t pollute and makes money for everyone all around. They would build nine plants in the U.S., each employing 25 people. Only catch: the first plant will be expensive. But the stats they cite are compelling: for every person in the United States there is one discarded tire lying around somewhere.

That’s what might have sparked your interest if you were the one with $100k under your mattress and looking for a place to put it that would help both you and the nation’s economy.

Rep. Rush Holt declared that innovation – private sector job growth based on a well-trained workshop and new ideas — is the key to an economic rebound. He likened the day to taking shots on goal. Not every one gets in, but some will.

Here is the link to some snapshots. If you find yourself there, add your name. And if you don’t like your likeness, let me know and I’ll take it down.

A correction was made to this post on 6-18-2010.