Meet LI venture capitalist Mark Fasciano

Mark Fasciano, managing director of Jericho-based Canrock Ventures, a venture capital firm, has become a leader in Long Island's efforts to create new companies and industries in a region struggling for jobs.

Fasciano's company finances and nurtures promising startups. In 1997, soon after receiving a doctorate in computer science from the University of Chicago, Fasciano and a former graduate school classmate, Roger Kahn, started FatWire Software, which manages web content, in a bedroom of his parents' Oyster Bay Cove home, where Fasciano was raised. He attended Chaminade High School in Mineola.

A few years later, they sold it to an investors group for an undisclosed price believed to be several million dollars; the company grew to $40 million in sales and is owned by Oracle Corp.

Since then, Fasciano, 43, has started and financed several other companies on Long Island, including General Sentiment, which trolls the Internet to measure how consumers feel about products and political candidates. The 10 companies in which Canrock holds investments -- all in information technology -- employ 53 people, mostly on Long Island.

Recently, Fasciano teamed with another venture capitalist, David Calone of Babylon-based Jove Equity Partners, to commit $500,000 to create more than a dozen companies on Long Island during the next two to three years, using technologies developed by local research institutions such as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Fasciano is also a member of a regional economic-development council appointed in July by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to create jobs and provide input on Long Island development projects.

Here are excerpts from an interview with Fasciano.

Is there a quick way to create jobs?
There is a quick way, and that is direct investment in early-stage companies. For companies that have a lot of growth potential, when you put a dollar into a start-up, 90 cents of it goes to hiring people. If you put $500,000 into a start-up, that company is going to go out and hire five people.

You've been very involved in the Long Island business community. How come?
There are two reasons: One is I live here. I care about the business health of the community. But moreover, I think there's big opportunity here. There's almost 3 million people on Long Island [but] no venture capitalism. I think the biggest opportunity my partners and I at Canrock have had is to create that. We want to be the go-to IT-centric fund on Long Island. You could think of Long Island as east New York. Long Island is going to capture its share of the [tech] market as long as we can create the basic conditions to make business work here.

What are those conditions?
My focus is on creating an industry hub, a cluster of technology companies. When you're recruiting companies it's important to tell them that they will not be alone. And when you're raising money it's important that people think of Long Island as having a legitimate cluster and density of companies.

We haven't had a lot of luck building these clusters. Take biotech, for example. It hasn't happened.
I wouldn't give up on that. There's still an opportunity for it. The perfect thing would be to get the technology companies off the ground and then hopefully we can extend that to the energy field and life sciences.

Can the "Thought Box" development concept that you've advocated -- building offices near the LIRR station in Hicksville to encourage entrepreneurs to start information-technology companies there -- really work, or will those entrepreneurs want to live in New York City?
Yes, it can work here. The Thought Box is designed to find a location that makes it possible to attract those 20-something and 30-something knowledge workers who want the flexibility of living either in the city or on Long Island. The idea is to create an industry hub for IT that is within walking distance from a major train station, in this case Hicksville. We want to make it easy for people who want to live in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn as well as Long Island.

Why do you think we're still losing jobs here, month after month?
It probably has to do with our cost of living. People working on Long Island require higher compensation to pay their taxes. Companies are going to seek to limit their [hiring] as much as possible and to seek to hire younger and less costly employees.

Given your background of starting tech companies, why aren't you in Silicon Valley?
When I was raising money to start FatWire . . . one investor said he would give us $10 million, but only if we moved to Silicon Valley. But for me personally, I grew up here. I think Long Island has wonderful characteristics. We have one of the cultural hubs of the world right next door in New York City. My parents are here. They love to play with their grandchildren. My wife and I get one or two nights a week off.

We've been talking about venture capital. Another type of finance -- private equity -- has been criticized lately, as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been portrayed as a job destroyer because he ran the Bain Capital investment firm. Your thoughts?
A fair assessment of Romney would be to deal not just with the companies he reorganized but also with those companies that survived and hired people. There's bound to be job creations and job reductions. The thing I am encouraged by is a candidate that is very conversant in business.

FAST FILE

Age. 43

Hometown. Port Washington

Family. Two girls, 12 and 9, and a son, 5; wife, Marisa, is a homemaker

Last book read. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

Sports. Gym rat

How spends spare time. Reading, family activities, acting in Young Presidents' Organization, which links business heads

Education. Doctorate in computer science, University of Chicago

Raised. Oyster Bay Cove

Last vacation. Panama

10 Canrock Ventures investments

Karma411. Online social fundraising

General Sentiment. Analyzes opinions about brands, products and politics

Hatsize. Cloud automation

CooCoo. Real-time train schedules

Thrive Metrics. Measures workforce productivity

Sentiment Alpha Text analytics for portfolio management decisions

Clearpath Robotic. Unmanned vehicles for industrial research and development

AHJ Online. Medical content from PBS program American Health Journal

Three2N. Three-dimensional data from images and video

SEO Pledge. Search engine for content marketing, reputation management and social media