Howard Leonhardt
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Howard Leonhardt is an inventor and serial entrepreneur. He has 21 patents for products for treating cardiovascular and heart disease. These include; cardiovascular balloon catheters, stent grafts for aneurysm repair, percutaneous heart valves, heart pacemakers with stem cell recruiting capabilities, electrical stimulation devices for promoting blood flow, electrical stimulation device for converting stem cells to heart muscle, stem cell compositions for heart repair, stem cell delivery systems, biological pacemakers and artificial lung catheter. His TALENT stent graft developed in the early 1990's holds a leading world market share for repairing aortic aneurysms without surgery. In early 1999 Leonhardt founded Bioheart, Inc. www.bioheartinc.com a leader in applying adult muscle stem cells to treat heart failure. Bioheart has raised over $105 million in paid in capital and additionally $40 million in loans and grants. Bioheart MyoCell is in Phase II/III clinical trials at 33 leading centers in the USA (The MARVEL Study). MARVEL Part I results were published in the American Heart Journal October of 2011 and demonstrated Bioheart MyoCell patients improved 95.7 meters in exercise capacity over placebo patients receiving optimal CHF drugs, whom declined minus 4 meters.
Leonhardt has founded 21 companies to date, most them them majority funded by his venture firm Leonhardt Ventures www.leonhardtventures.com, and their affiliated angel investor network - see web site for full portfolio. He holds a diploma in International Trade from Anoka Technical College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended Anoka-Ramsey College and the University of Minnesota. He has received an honorary Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Northern California and is an honorary alumnus of the University of Florida and Florida International University, where he has served both as a consulting professor teaching entrepreneurship. He continues to serve on various boards of all three universities. He has lectured on entrepreneurship at Princeton University, UCLA, the University of Minnesota and at numerous other campuses.
The Enormous Implications of Crowdfunding
POSTED BY HOWARD LEONHARDT · MARCH 18, 2012 6:08 PM
We are about to experience the grandest expression of human creativity and economic growth ever seen in the history of human civilization. Innovative breakthroughs that took decades to create, fund, develop and bring to market will now take mere months. New ideas will be free market tested earlier in their development cycle and discarded or funded at a faster rate. The old innovators mantra of try a lot of stuff and keep what works will be applied at hyper speed rates.
It is universal amongst mankind that right after the health and security of their family what is most sought is a good job. Crowdfunding creates jobs.
Crowdfunding is human will expressed in pure form. A person with a vision becomes a dream funded on a mission. It is the explosive combination of democracy and free market capitalism. It's democracy and capitalism in action: think you have a great idea? Convince enough people and you can make it a reality. If not, back to the drawing board. It allows new ideas to get funded and to be free market tested at a lower cost, with less complexity, in less time than ever before. Experimentation has now become possible for millions that were previously excluded from having any chance for their idea to be tried. I am confident that this simple breakthrough socio-economic tool is about to herald in mankind's greatest era.
Every human has a need to feel a part of some great cause and rewarding project. The greatest tragedy of this recession is not the toll on all our bank accounts it is the toll on the human spirit. Crowdfunding is about to be the spark that energizes people to follow their dreams, and to join others that they believe in, to pursue a cause worthy of pursuing. Now more than ever we crave something to believe in, something to support, a reason to care.
A case can be made that the real cause of this worldwide recession is a lost of confidence in these five major forms...
- Loss of consumer confidence to buy things.
- Loss of investor confidence to invest.
- Loss of business confidence to buy and hire for growth.
- Loss of bank confidence to make loans to businesses.
- Loss of availability of credit to potential buyers
We believe crowdfunding can be the spark that ignites growing confidence in all five of these essential areas. When people are given the opportunity to pursue their dreams they light up the world around them with enthusiasm, which leads to accomplishment, gratitude and increased confidence.
