Harris & Harris Group incorporated under the laws of the state of New York in August 1981. In 1983, we completed an initial public offering ("IPO"). In 1984, we divested all of our assets except Otisville BioTech, Inc., and became a financial services company with the investment in Otisville as the initial focus of our business activity.
In 1992, we registered as an investment company under the 1940 Act, commencing operations as a closed-end, non-diversified investment company. In 1995, we elected to become a BDC subject to the provisions of Sections 55 through 65 of the 1940 Act.
Harris & Harris Group has been investing in companies with proprietary technology since 1983. For most of our history, we were a very small firm that invested in and helped develop early stage businesses, particularly ones founded on proprietary intellectual property.
Prior to 2002, we did not specialize in any particular industry vertical. Often, in our early days, we were the founding investor in our portfolio companies. In a given year, we might invest in only one or two new companies. From 1983 through the present, our financial successes include BioVex, Crystal-IS, Solazyme, Siluria, NanoGram Devices, Nanophase Technologies, Genomica, NeuroMetrix, SciQuest, Ag Services of America, Molten Metal Technology, Re Capital Corporation, Capital Trust Company, Magellan Health Services, Alliance Pharmaceutical, NBX Corporation, Princeton Video Image and PHZ Capital Partners. Ten of these completed public offerings, the rest were acquired.
We first became interested in nanotechnology in 1994, when we invested in Nanophase, which subsequently went public in 1997. By early 2002, we were convinced that nanotechnology had matured sufficiently to provide us with a robust deal flow for the indefinite future. We began to focus exclusively on nanotechnology and microsystems. We began recruiting professionals for our Company with the requisite specialized backgrounds to capitalize on an emerging set of investment opportunities based upon the novel properties of matter at the nanoscale, as well as on related technologies.