RVC: 15 angel-led funding rounds closed in 2017

Wednesday February 28, 2018 0 comments Tags: Denver, Rockies Venture Club, Peter Adams, Ashley Colpaart, The Food Corridor, Dave Harris, CirrusMD, Rockies Venture Fund, Women's Investor Network

DENVER -- Rockies Venture Club (RVC), one of the largest and most experienced angel investing organizations in the country, announced it led and closed 15 funding rounds over the past year.

RVC said it has created a community of accredited investors who are passionate about helping early-stage companies raise the capital they need to grow.

This trend of early-stage investing in Colorado is encouraging considering the fact that there has been a downward trend in early-stage activity worldwide, RVC said. A November 2017 report by TechCrunch shows that -- despite record levels of venture capital being raised -- the number of funding rounds has been cut in half since 2014, indicating capital is being concentrated into larger, later-stage companies.

“One of RVC’s leading principles is to be as diversified as possible when investing in companies,” said Peter Adams, RVC executive director.

“We believe that investing in a variety of sectors allows our angel investors to diversify their personal portfolios while having fun learning about industries they don’t have past experience in.”

Among the 15 new companies RVC backed in 2017 there was industry representation within CyberSecurity, AgTech, FinTech, Medical Devices, and Consumer Products, just to name a few.

In addition to engaging local capital through its network of over 200 active angel investors, Rockies Venture Club said it also syndicates many of these deals with other angel groups across the U.S.

“RVC has been working to develop strong partnerships with other angel groups for several years now,” said Dave Harris, RVC’s director of operations.

“This allows companies to more quickly and easily close their funding rounds, bring deal flow to other areas of the country, and ultimately results in a greater amount of capital being invested directly in Colorado companies.”

Among the 15 deals, RVC led the seed-round in the female founded, Fort Collins company, The Food Corridor (TFC).

TFC is the first online marketplace for food businesses to connect with available commercial food assets. Food businesses can find and book commercial kitchens, equipment, commissaries, processors, co-packers and food storage spaces.

CEO Ashley Colpaart put together a $550k round through Rockies Venture Club, Rockies Venture Fund and other Northern Colorado Investors.

“I believe that RVC investors were especially interested in this deal due to Ashley’s deep industry knowledge and the promising early traction they have gained with food entrepreneurs and commercial kitchen spaces,” said Adams.

RVC angels also invested in CirrusMD’s $7 million Series A round. CirrusMD is a company that gives patients immediate access to providers via secure chat so healthcare organizations can excel in a value-based care environment.

It was the third round that RVC has participated in, having first invested in the company in 2014. Since then CirrusMD has expanded access to care to over a million patients and formed strong partnerships with some of the largest health systems across the country.

Beyond closing the 15 deals, in 2017 Rockies Venture Club created the Women’s Investor Network(WIN), an initiative created to address the lack of diversity in Colorado’s investor community, launched the Rockies Venture Fund, an early-stage VC fund that invests alongside RVC’s angel investors, and collaborated with the Colorado OEDIT to create the OEDIT HyperAccelerator, program that helps Advanced Industry grant recipients raise necessary matching funds.

The club will be hosting the 11th annual Angel Capital Summit (ACS) in March. The Angel Capital Summit is the largest angel investing event in Colorado, bringing together more than 300 investors, entrepreneurs, and community members together under one roof.

This year’s conference will focus around current, past and future waves of innovation that have had or will have lasting impacts on the venture capital industry.

Keynote speakers at ACS this year are Divya Narenda and Colorado’s own Andre Durand. Narendra is the founder and CEO of SumZero, and co-founded ConnectU, the inspiration behind Facebook. Durand is the founder and CEO of Ping Identity, who led the company through a $600M+ acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in 2016.