Displaying great
vigor, the Maine Angels have elected new leaders, started collecting dues,
recruited new members, begun participating in regional summits, and invested in
eleven new deals in the last twelve months.
“New officers were nominated last fall, and
annual dues were initiated of just under $200 to actively require members to
reaffirm their interest,” says Chair Sandra Stone. “There were seventeen
members that chose to become ‘inactive alumni.’ Since the October Annual
meeting, however, fourteen new members have joined, bringing us up to 46
members. In those seven months, we have reviewed over 60 deals which we
declined to pursue, and closed on over $1.1M on eleven deals in the last twelve
months. Our total portfolio now stands at almost $5.89M invested in 51 deals,
34 individual companies, 17 follow ons.”
“After
participating in our first ACA regional
summit in Feb 2012, where Maine Angels introduced the Cerahelix deal
(generating good interest but only securing minimal total investment of $25,000
from three investors) we invited two of the other regional summit presenters up
here, and invested $100,000 in both Respiratory Motion, and JB
Therapeutics.” says Stone.
“We have not yet had a profitable exit, but
are excited about several of the companies in the pipeline,” she says.
The
Maine Angels was founded by Charlie Sidman in 2003. He was succeeded by Chris
Speh (2007-2011). Sandra Stone is now Chair and Don Gooding, Vice Chair. The group typically meets on the 4th Friday of each month from nine to noon. They currently rotate locations having
outgrown the prior space; 25-30 members attend these days.
Chair Sandra Stone is a principal at Sea Cove
Solutions – Collaborations in Entrepreneurship. Formerly she was with MCED,
Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development, a business technology incubator
in Portland, Maine.
An Angel’s Diary
This title of this
post reflects my ambiguity toward the way Maine presents itself to those of us “from
away.” In the past, signs at the border
proclaimed “Maine, The Way Life Ought To Be.”
Apparently, the grammar police seized the slogan; today it reads “Maine,
The Way Life Should Be.” I prefer the
former as a truer expression of the Down East patois, which I love.
If you haven’t
visited recently, Maine is surprisingly large and, away from the coast, surprisingly
poor. In Frenchville, my Grandma’s hometown, for the last 100 years they have
been exporting the same four products:
pine, pulp, potatoes, and people. Before
Route 95, to get these “four Ps” to market in Boston they had to truck them through the Haynesville
Woods. Should you desire to know what the trip was like, click here for a video of Maine’s
greatest country singer, Dick Curless, telling you all about it.
Angels could do
much for the Maine economy, were it not so very very hard to raise money for strictly
regional deals, as Maine Angel John Sharood and I discussed at our most recent ACA meeting in Waltham. Perhaps Crowdfunding could help, particularly
if it provides some liquidity, but we won’t know until the new rules are made
and published.
-George McQuilken
