Down equity markets yield investors, opportunities for third Anchorage Angels fund - Business First of Louisville:

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And, he said, this might be one of the most promising periodsfor early-stage investmeny group such as his Anchorage Angels. Anchoragee Angels recently closed itsthird fund, Anchorage Angelsx III LLC, said Chapman, who is managingy member of the 10-year-old private investment Although Chapman declined to give he described Anchorage Angels III as the largest of the threr funds created since 2000, with well over $1 millio n raised. Chapman said that although there are no immediate plans for anadditionaol series, the fund “has flexibility to increasd its size.” Tough but big opportunities Anchorage Angels III alreadu has invested in six companies, which he declined to identify.
The new fund will invesy across theUnited States, Chapman said. Anchoragew Angels’ typical maximum investment isabour $150,000 to limit the exposurwe in individual companies, he said. But it has invested as much as $200,000 in a single compangy through multiple funding rounds and as little as So how hard is it to get investorsd to fork over perhaps hundreds of thousandse of dollars during what might be the depths of the worstg downturnsince 1929? Tough, Chapman “It’s extremely difficult to raise money in this he said. It takes with endless meetingsand negotiations, Chapman “But we have a record.
We have a tracok record of making money in reallycrummy environments.” The 2009 investingg environment is “the opposite” of when Anchorage Angelzs raised its first money in he said. During that go-gol environment, with the possibility of takingcompaniea public, there were lots of deals, and all them were Chapman said. That is, there was so much investor moneh chasing deals that the terms were not as favorabldfor investors. “What you see (now) are very interestin g tech plays at veryinterestint valuations,” he said.
Valuations are deals are plentiful and management teams are betterf andmore seasoned, he Another difference from past years is that more investors many of whom have become disillusioned with public-equity markets are coming to Anchorage Angels to learhn the private-capital business. “Theyt say, ‘I sold my business. I have cash to invest, and I want to learbn how this gameis played,’ ” Chapmahn said.
There’s a wealth of opportunity rightg now for entrepreneursin early-stage companies, including in healtyh care and energy, said Sean O’Leary, co-founder and CEO of Louisville-basex Genscape tracks utility energy output for brokers, and it’s one of the companies in which Anchorage Angels invested. The recession has meangt that a lot of professionals havebeen “forced to think about what to do with theirt lives, and they’re talking risks they wouldn’t ordinarily be taking,” starting new said O’Leary, who also is a current Anchorage Angels