Viking Systems: Implementing a Public Start-Up Model
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
A year ago, Viking Systems Inc. reinvented itself based on the belief that it has found a way to take advantage of the public model to acquire small medical device companies and provide incentives to their entrepreneurial founders to work towards the greater good of an integrated company. Viking will use combinations of stock, cash, and royalties tied to the future performance of products to acquire companies, products or services for the surgical suite that have strong intellectual property and revenues in the $500,000 to $10 million range. The idea is to take advantage of the medical device industry's fragmentation, both in terms of the large number of one-product companies that exist, and the requirement, in Viking's new target market-minimally invasive surgery--for numerous parts and pieces found within different types of companies. Its first acquisition was the visualization business of Vista Medical Technologies.