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Taxes/Finance
The state of finance in Florida
Cash Angels
Two years ago, a group of Florida investors and entrepreneurs seeded the pot for a new venture capital fund aimed at Florida technology companies.
Since launching, their FAN Fund has attracted more than 40 investors — most of whom are from Florida — and raised about $10 million, says Mitchel Laskey, the fund’s managing general partner. The Orlando entrepreneur has built a number of companies, including health-care software business Dynamic Health Care Technologies that Cerner Corp. bought in 2001, and CNL Bank, which sold to Valley National in 2015 for more than $200 million.
The fund’s managers have seen about 300 companies, taken a “good look” at about 75 and invested in 10 — with a cumulative $7 million in investments so far.
The fund has invested in companies in Boca Raton, Orlando and St. Petersburg, among other locations, and aims for companies that Laskey calls “post-startups.”
“These are companies where they have a customer or two, they have the beginnings of unit economics and revenue, and now they’re ready to go the next level,” he says. “We’re the part of capital that’s right after friends and family.”
Preferred targets are companies that are in a big market with a unique product or service — and for which fund managers can identify multiple “exit paths” that could reasonably be achieved within three to five years. The primary exit path is likely to be an acquisition by a larger company.
That hasn’t happened yet for any of the FAN Fund’s investments, but Laskey says things are trending in the right direction. Five of the 10 companies it has invested in have since landed second rounds of financing.
Things are going well enough that managers are planning to launch a second fund next year.
“We think Florida is really being underserved,” he says. “Our fund really has a dual purpose: It’s about doing good and, as a result of doing good, we expect to do well.”
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