For Innovation Works, 2007 was a very good year.

The Hazelwood-based venture capital fund that specializes in giving a leg up to young technology companies released its annual report last night, and the first page alone gives a string of figures charting a continuing upswing in Pittsburgh's tech sector. During the year, Innovation Works:

• invested $6.1 million in technology companies, including its 100th investment;

• provided 67 companies with direct investment, up 29 percent from 2006; and

• assisted 237 companies with business expertise, up from 230 in 2006.

Perhaps even more significant than it's own numbers are those posted by the companies that it has helped to fund. During 2007, those companies created 367 jobs, with an average salary of $52,888, and raised $122 million in follow-on funding, with 24 of them raising more than $1 million each. Indeed, 65 percent of the region's venture capital investments went to companies in Innovation Works' portfolio, the agency reported.

Besides reaching milestones in funding startups, Innovation Works created a program last year to help companies with what can be one of the most mysterious aspects of creating a company: human resources.

"Human resource ingredients are perhaps the most critical elements of success," chief executive officer Rich Lunak said. But company founders are often stymied by such human resource challenges as "building their first sales forces and not knowing how to set up a commission structure."

When the right people are hired to lead the company, he said, "they put the right kinds of processes and people in place, hire good people below them and establish the right culture in the organization for it to be successful."

Innovation Works' success stories last year include:

• Knopp Neurosciences, which is working on a drug therapy to slow the advance ALS ("Lou Gehrig's disease"). Knopp's drug was granted "orphan drug" status by the Food and Drug Administration. An orphan drug is one that treats relatively rare diseases. The designation makes the company eligible for incentives for further development of the drug, which might not be economically feasible otherwise.

• Printed electronics manufacturer Plextronics, which attracted more than $20 million in new investment last year and set an efficiency record with its solar cells; and

• Thorley Indsutries, LLC, which signed a $215 million with Hasbro for that company to manufacture and sell a new line of Thorley products.

Mr. Lunak and his staff have reviewed more than 100 business plans this year, and the fund has established another new initiative -- Alpha Lab, an incubator for software companies, with a special focus on gaming and Internet software. Applications for the program were taken in March. Awardees will receive $25,000 in seed funding, free office space for six months and ongoing advice from Innovation Works' executive team during that same time.

With all that Innovation Works does for small companies, Mr. Lunak said the long-term goal is that they not remain small.

"Now let's turn a number of them into very large 1,000-plus employers and large drivers of our tech economy," he said, "and we can hopefully become another Seattle or Austin or Boston."