By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: How many investments do you have in your portfolio right now? Liz: We have nine. Irina: What stage of business development you usually invest in? Liz: Early. But they have to have a customer and the product. We do not do R&D. And frankly, the customer doesn’t necessarily have
By guest author Irina Patterson Liz: You know, one of the things that happens in a bad economy is if a company is doing fairly well, sometimes the entrepreneurs don’t want to exit. Because they’re comfortable. They get their salary, they’re making money, the company’s doing OK . . . so it’s a little harder
By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: Do you have any sector preference? Liz: No, we just want to invest in companies that we can exit and make money in. We just don’t have the luxury. Now, I will tell you, we don’t invest in things we know absolutely nothing about. We don’t invest in real
By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: On average, from all the sources, how many pitches do you receive a month? Liz: I’ve been keeping a running tab this year just out of my own interest, and I’m talking to about 20 entrepreneurs a month. But when our fund meets, we usually have wind it down
By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: So, not all of your fund investors are based in Montana? Liz: No, five are not. Some are here part of the year, and they really wanted to be part of this, and that was part of the discussion when we formed the fund. For example, of the 33
By guest author Irina Patterson This is the twenty-eighth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Elizabeth Marchi, fund coordinator at Frontier Angel Fund LLC. It’s a member managed pooled fund – that is, they review deals together and then vote to invest their pooled capital. Their investments range from