AmerScan Global Aids Norwegian Investors

Ventura County is as good a place as any to operate a Scandinavian venture capital fund.

For that, you can take the word of Marty Albert, president of AmerScan Global Partners, a Thousand Oaks concern that operates a $10-million, Oslo-based fund that’s helped Norwegians launch three high-tech concerns in the United States.

Albert, 62, is an ex-engineer and longtime high-tech entrepreneur. In 1989, he was taking part in a business colloquium at Cal Lutheran University. A Norwegian transfer student in the audience, Erik Tiller, suggested he try lecturing in Scandinavia.

“I took his advice and found that Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway have extremely high per-capita rates of engineers,” Albert recalls. “These countries give strong support to research and development, but beyond that, it’s hard for a small company to get funding.”

With Tiller and two other Scandinavians as his partners, Albert raised enough money to start AmerScan I, which has helped Norwegians launch three companies. He’s president of one, Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, a producer of computer-clustering systems. The firm recently moved from Santa Clara to Westlake Village.

Albert sees nothing unusual in operating a fund thousands of miles away from its official headquarters. He even enjoys being far removed from Wall Street and other Eastern money centers. “They’re a bunch of snobs back there. Who needs them?”

Next, Albert and his partners hope to raise $40 million to $50 million for another fund, AmerScan II, to provide even more backing for Scandinavian entrepreneurs.