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August 04. 2014 11:34AM

Bethlehem’s TechVentures invests $60,000 in two startup companies

By Jennifer Glose
Two early stage companies in the Lehigh Valley were approved for a total of $60,000 in funding from

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Colymer Industries, a developer of a patented roofing asphalt, and SeKur Technology Inc., which is developing a high-level encryption technology, have been granted loans from Ben Franklin Technology Partners to help in the launch of their products.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners, funded by the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development, has a goal to help generate and retain jobs in 21 counties of northeastern Pennsylvania. BFTP writes a grant each year for funding that can be used for investing in developing and growing early stage, technology oriented companies.

Colymer, which is in Ben Franklin TechVentures, a startup incubator hub on Lehigh University’s Mountaintop campus, has been granted $50,000, and SeKur Technology of East Allentown has been awarded $10,000.

Colymer Industries will use the loan to implement a marketing and sales strategy to commercialize Tarzanite, the company’s nonasphalt roofing and waterproofing material. An improved coal tar formulation, Tarzanite is not water-soluble and is environmentally beneficial, and is expected to outlast traditional asphalt-based materials.

“We are ecstatic,” Paul Boddy, Colymer’s co-founder and senior vice president of sales and marketing, said this morning. “It’s [the funding] giving us a launch pad to execute our plans.”

William Brown, who has a background as an administrative networking engineer, started developing the concept for SeKurXfr about five years ago, an encryption technology that derived from his many years as a music producer, seeing how downloaded music was easily and frequently being stolen.

“The product [SekurXfr] allows you to encrypt a file and encode it so it can be tracked,” SeKur’s founder and CEO, Brown said this morning. “Even if someone pulls it offline or downloads it.”

With three employees at SeKur Technology in East Allentown, Brown said his company will use the funds to help build its marketing plan and to help in finding more revenue to launch the product by early 2015.

“It’s very exciting,” Brown said. “The process of building something, funding it, then having people see it and believe it.”