Heatgenie Taps New Ceo; Receives $250,000 From Texas Emerging Technology Fund

May 5, 2010 - PRLog -- Austin, TX, May 5, 2010--Austin-based HeatGenie announced today the addition of Gary Forni to its management team as Chief Executive Officer.    Forni has a 25-year track record of high-performance leadership in the global technology industry, including Director of Marketing roles with both Intel and Marvell Semiconductor.    While at Intel, Forni was a key player in establishing “Greenfield” industries including Smartphone processors, PCMCIA cards, Flash memory and Miniature cards.  “We are very pleased to add someone with Gary’s experienced leadership in successful technology commercialization to our team.” said founder and CTO, Brendan Coffey.   Balancing his Fortune 500 experience, Forni has had significant experience developing early-stage companies through his collaboration with Intel Capital and through his work consulting with multiple, Austin-based start-ups.  “HeatGenie has a game changing technology and I’m looking forward to working with the team to grow the technology from the lab into a commercial success”.

HeatGenie also announced that it received an additional $250,000 in third tranche funding from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.  The latest tranche will be used for continued technology development as well as to ramp up new customers.  Major brand names in the food and food packaging industries have expressed significant interest in this new technology, which has the potential to increase consumers’ options for when and where to enjoy ready-to-serve products and to bring new, non-cannibalizing sales from an expansion of usage settings and channels.

HeatGenie’s platform technology will allow consumers to enjoy hot meals on the go, without a stove or microwave.  With a simple push of a button, consumers can safely heat single serve portions of food in less than 2 minutes.  In its 2009 report, “Packaging Trends in Food and Drink”, Mintel Corporation identified “convenience and functionality” as one three major consumer trends that has globally influenced food and beverage sales.  “We’ve been told repeatedly by major brands that self-heating is the holy grail of convenience packaging”, says Forni.  “Our technology is the first to meet the industry’s strict criteria of efficiency, safety, sustainability and low cost.”

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About HeatGenie:

HeatGenie™ has pioneered a safe, patent-pending, self-heating technology that can easily integrate into multiple forms of consumer packaging to heat food/beverages “on the go”. HeatGenie is the first and only company to satisfy the non-negotiable criteria for a commercially viable technology: safety, ease of use, cost effectiveness, light weight and sustainability. For more information visit: www.heatgenie.com.


About The Texas Emerging Technology Fund:
The TETF is a $200 million initiative created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 at the governor’s request, and reauthorized in 2007 and again in 2009. A 17-member advisory committee of high-tech leaders, entrepreneurs and research experts reviews potential projects and recommends funding allocations to the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the House. To date, the TETF has allocated more than $132.25 million in funds to 104 early stage companies.