Investment Criteria
Great Teams, Growing Markets, Compelling Products.
Not unlike most of our friends in the venture industry, we focus on great teams with compelling offerings that address rapidly growing markets. We invest in seed and early-stage technology companies that have some level of early revenue traction, truly differentiated products, services, or channels, and rapidly scalable business models. Like most firms, we believe management is paramount. But we also understand that building teams is hard, and we know how to help. We’ll invest in complete teams, and we’ll also invest in inspired entrepreneurs who need help building out their teams.
Our initial investments range in size from $100,000 to $2,000,000. While we most often will lead our investments, we are not religious about that. We are, however, religious about bringing investment partners into the deals that we do, believing that in the vast majority of cases both we, and the companies we’re investing in, can benefit greatly from another set of eyes, ears, and relationships at the table. Through partnering with other firms, we can participate in financings as large as $8-10 million. And for every company we back, we set aside capital in reserve, knowing that both we and our companies are better off if we ensure that, down the road, there is additional capital available around the table.
We are early-stage investors. And we understand that investing at this level takes hard work. As a result, we like to do it regionally. We want to be able to spend a lot of time with our companies, if necessary. And we want to know and intimately understand the environments in which they are operating. Given that, our investments are located primarily in New York State, where our networks are strongest and where we can effectively cover the territory.
