April 17, 2006
Trail mix | Entrepreneurs and investors trade the boardroom for a chairlift at a recent networking event
By Taylor Smith
Looking for money is nothing new to Jay Friedlander. As chief operating officer of O'Naturals, a Portland-based restaurant chain, Friedlander has scoured venture capital offices from Maine to Manhattan in search of investments to help grow the company. He's pitched the O'Naturals concept ˆ organic and natural foods, served fast ˆ to individual and angel investors, and has worked the room at conferences in hopes of drumming up interest in the company. "We've talked over the years with a number of different people from all different walks of life," he says.
At first blush, then, Friedlander's late March visit to Peak Pitch, a networking event set up by New Hampshire-based investment fund Borealis Ventures, would be much of the same: shaking hands and mingling with a group of investors, delivering a pitch or two over a buffet breakfast. But Peak Pitch turns the typical meet-and-greet-with-investors program on its head by taking it out of the office and onto the ski slopes.
Borealis Ventures scheduled the final leg of its Peak Pitch series at Sunday River in Newry at the end of March, following two events in New Hampshire and Vermont earlier in the month. At Sunday River, a ski lift took the place of a conference room, and wingtips and pinstripes yielded to ski boots and snow pants. Phil Ferneau, managing director and co-founder of Borealis Ventures, says the Peak Pitch format is intentionally stripped down ˆ after all, entrepreneurs aren't likely to drag loads of charts and graphs onto the ski lift. "It's passion over PowerPoint," he says.
The event, staged by Borealis and sponsored by groups including the Augusta-based Finance Authority of Maine, FAME's Small Enterprise Growth Fund and Portland-based CEI Community Ventures, attracted roughly 50 entrepreneurs, business executives and members of New England's venture capital community. The goal was diversity among the participants: "We had lobster traps to lab equipment, and everything from granola to genetics," says Ferneau.
In many ways, this kind of networking is key to functioning as a venture capitalist in Maine and northern New England, according to Ferneau. Compared to a city like Boston, where loads of entrepreneurs are fighting for limited face-time with investors, the number of investment-worthy businesses in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are fewer and farther between. Still, good deals are out there, according to the venture community ˆ but finding them is the challenge.
One of the keys to identifying companies worth giving a check is prying them out of the woodwork, says John Burns, manager of the Small Enterprise Growth Fund in Augusta. He points to Peak Pitch as a great way to bring entrepreneurs and investors together to speed that process. "So much of everything, really, is relationship building," he says. "Our best investments have been the ones where we get to know the company before we ultimately invest."
The blue and the green
Peak Pitch might sound like a good excuse to knock off work, strap on some skis and catch a few slushy springtime runs ˆ especially considering the day was one of those rare early spring scorchers, when the mercury spikes and winter-whitened faces redden in the blink of an eye. But for Friedlander, the event was much more than a chance to play hooky from the office. Instead, Peak Pitch was a free opportunity ˆ there was no charge to participants ˆ to have impromptu but important chats with any of the roughly two dozen investors milling around the lift line, schussing down the slopes or lounging in the sun on the deck of the base lodge.
O'Naturals is preparing to franchise its restaurants, and Friedlander says the company is working to raise about $750,000 to cover costs involved in such a move. The company has secured a little more than half of that amount through private investors, but he's approaching the venture capital community to make up the $350,000 difference. "I thought it was one of the most productive events I've been to because you had some one-on-one time [with investors]," he says. "And if they weren't interested, they might be able to get you in touch with someone who's interested."
Peak Pitch sets the stage for that kind of networking with a decidedly New England spin on the classic elevator pitch, where entrepreneurs must explain their business to an investor in a quick and concise way. At the event, entrepreneurs looking for money wore blue bibs, while investors stood out in their green bibs. At the bottom of the chairlift, Borealis fund manager and co-founder Jesse Devitte matched blue bibs with green bibs, shuttling them onto the lift and on their way up the mountain. Once on the chair, blue-bibbed entrepreneurs were instructed to open the roughly 10-minute lift ride with a quick three-minute pitch. For the rest of the ride, investors had the chance to ask questions, poke holes in the business plan, offer advice and anything in between.
Established companies like O'Naturals and Grandy Oats, a Brownfield-based maker of organic granola, mixed with relative newcomers like CrossRate Technology, a South Portland-based startup working on improving navigation technology. The more than 20 investors came from state-sponsored funding organizations like FAME as well as venture capital groups like Masthead Venture Partners in Portland and Williamstown, Mass.-based Village Ventures.
Rob Small, a commercial loan officer at FAME, says the wide range of attendees made for an interesting dynamic. What's more, Small figures the event's casual atmosphere made conversation easier. "I think just being out of the office lets everybody let their guard down and be relaxed," he says. "There were so many companiesˆ I almost couldn't wait to get to the bottom to hear the next business idea."
Aaron Anker, founder of Grandy Oats, took advantage of a mid-morning lift ride with Ferneau to explain his business, which last year shipped 350,000 pounds of granola, trail mix and roasted nuts ˆ a 65% increase from the previous year. Although Anker says he's spoken with a lot of potential investors in recent months, he's not sure whether the company needs a big infusion of capital to continue funding that growth. "We want a partnership that can bring us money, but also knowledge," he says.
By the time Anker and Ferneau made it off the chairlift, Ferneau, who also teaches at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., mentioned that Anker might want to explore working with business school students. As the pair stood at the top of the Little White Cap chairlift, Ferneau told Anker that students could spend a semester analyzing the company's business plan and marketing strategy ˆ the kind of work that could pay big dividends for Grandy Oats. "Students are looking for concrete ways to apply their newfound skills, and they're always itching to work with companies," says Ferneau. "And startups are always eager to get the smart guys who six months from now will be working at places like Goldman Sachs or [consulting firm] McKinsey & Co."
Practice runs
Zach Conover, president and CEO of CrossRate Technology, says he received plenty of useful feedback from the investors he met at Peak Pitch. His company, which is producing technology that aims to improve the reliability of GPS and LORAN navigational systems, has raised money primarily through what Conover calls the "extended friends and family" round of financing. But that funding, along with a $160,000 development award received last June from the Maine Technology Institute, can only get CrossRate so far, says Conover.
Now, the company is hoping to raise roughly $2 million from the venture community to fund the beta testing of its product and hire a sales and marketing team. Conover says he's made plenty of cold calls to venture capital firms, trying to set up face-to-face meetings. But that's often easier said than done. "Anybody who's [cold-called] before can tell you that it doesn't get you that far," he says. "It can be months of work to network to the right person so the meeting is productive and not just a five minute phone call."
The appeal of Peak Pitch, however, was being able to network with roughly 50 investors and fellow entrepreneurs, says Conover. Before hitting the slopes, CrossRate was selected to give a sample pitch to Ferneau to kick off the event in the base lodge early that morning. Thanks to that sample pitch ˆ which lasted no more than a few minutes ˆ each investor he spoke with later in the day knew, at least in broad terms, about CrossRate Technology. "It turned the lift rides into more of a Q&A," says Conover. "That type of opportunity, you can work and work and sometimes things like that fall into your lap."
For Leo Corcoran, CEO of ClaimVantage, a Falmouth startup designing software for the insurance industry, Peak Pitch was good practice for his eventual funding search. Corcoran says ClaimVantage has plenty of cash to make it through the next 15 or so months, but that he's beginning to test the venture capital waters in hopes of cultivating relationships with investors that he can tap later. Each lift ride and each pitch helped him further hone his speech. "I think it improved during the morning," he says. "I went down about eight times and I was exhausted."
Corcoran wasn't alone. By early afternoon, most participants were running out of steam after a morning of pitching, chatting and pushing down the slopes through heavy spring snow. At half past noon, the skis and snowboards came off and the Peak Pitch party moved onto the sun deck behind the White Cap lodge for a lunch of burgers and sausages. The change in scenery didn't put a stop to the conversations between entrepreneurs and investors, which is exactly what Borealis Ventures' Ferneau says he hopes to see at these events. "We're really just trying to rally the region's entrepreneurial community," he says. "We don't have as many elevators up here, but we do have a lot of ski lifts."
At first blush, then, Friedlander's late March visit to Peak Pitch, a networking event set up by New Hampshire-based investment fund Borealis Ventures, would be much of the same: shaking hands and mingling with a group of investors, delivering a pitch or two over a buffet breakfast. But Peak Pitch turns the typical meet-and-greet-with-investors program on its head by taking it out of the office and onto the ski slopes.
Borealis Ventures scheduled the final leg of its Peak Pitch series at Sunday River in Newry at the end of March, following two events in New Hampshire and Vermont earlier in the month. At Sunday River, a ski lift took the place of a conference room, and wingtips and pinstripes yielded to ski boots and snow pants. Phil Ferneau, managing director and co-founder of Borealis Ventures, says the Peak Pitch format is intentionally stripped down ˆ after all, entrepreneurs aren't likely to drag loads of charts and graphs onto the ski lift. "It's passion over PowerPoint," he says.
The event, staged by Borealis and sponsored by groups including the Augusta-based Finance Authority of Maine, FAME's Small Enterprise Growth Fund and Portland-based CEI Community Ventures, attracted roughly 50 entrepreneurs, business executives and members of New England's venture capital community. The goal was diversity among the participants: "We had lobster traps to lab equipment, and everything from granola to genetics," says Ferneau.
In many ways, this kind of networking is key to functioning as a venture capitalist in Maine and northern New England, according to Ferneau. Compared to a city like Boston, where loads of entrepreneurs are fighting for limited face-time with investors, the number of investment-worthy businesses in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are fewer and farther between. Still, good deals are out there, according to the venture community ˆ but finding them is the challenge.
One of the keys to identifying companies worth giving a check is prying them out of the woodwork, says John Burns, manager of the Small Enterprise Growth Fund in Augusta. He points to Peak Pitch as a great way to bring entrepreneurs and investors together to speed that process. "So much of everything, really, is relationship building," he says. "Our best investments have been the ones where we get to know the company before we ultimately invest."
The blue and the green
Peak Pitch might sound like a good excuse to knock off work, strap on some skis and catch a few slushy springtime runs ˆ especially considering the day was one of those rare early spring scorchers, when the mercury spikes and winter-whitened faces redden in the blink of an eye. But for Friedlander, the event was much more than a chance to play hooky from the office. Instead, Peak Pitch was a free opportunity ˆ there was no charge to participants ˆ to have impromptu but important chats with any of the roughly two dozen investors milling around the lift line, schussing down the slopes or lounging in the sun on the deck of the base lodge.
O'Naturals is preparing to franchise its restaurants, and Friedlander says the company is working to raise about $750,000 to cover costs involved in such a move. The company has secured a little more than half of that amount through private investors, but he's approaching the venture capital community to make up the $350,000 difference. "I thought it was one of the most productive events I've been to because you had some one-on-one time [with investors]," he says. "And if they weren't interested, they might be able to get you in touch with someone who's interested."
Peak Pitch sets the stage for that kind of networking with a decidedly New England spin on the classic elevator pitch, where entrepreneurs must explain their business to an investor in a quick and concise way. At the event, entrepreneurs looking for money wore blue bibs, while investors stood out in their green bibs. At the bottom of the chairlift, Borealis fund manager and co-founder Jesse Devitte matched blue bibs with green bibs, shuttling them onto the lift and on their way up the mountain. Once on the chair, blue-bibbed entrepreneurs were instructed to open the roughly 10-minute lift ride with a quick three-minute pitch. For the rest of the ride, investors had the chance to ask questions, poke holes in the business plan, offer advice and anything in between.
Established companies like O'Naturals and Grandy Oats, a Brownfield-based maker of organic granola, mixed with relative newcomers like CrossRate Technology, a South Portland-based startup working on improving navigation technology. The more than 20 investors came from state-sponsored funding organizations like FAME as well as venture capital groups like Masthead Venture Partners in Portland and Williamstown, Mass.-based Village Ventures.
Rob Small, a commercial loan officer at FAME, says the wide range of attendees made for an interesting dynamic. What's more, Small figures the event's casual atmosphere made conversation easier. "I think just being out of the office lets everybody let their guard down and be relaxed," he says. "There were so many companiesˆ I almost couldn't wait to get to the bottom to hear the next business idea."
Aaron Anker, founder of Grandy Oats, took advantage of a mid-morning lift ride with Ferneau to explain his business, which last year shipped 350,000 pounds of granola, trail mix and roasted nuts ˆ a 65% increase from the previous year. Although Anker says he's spoken with a lot of potential investors in recent months, he's not sure whether the company needs a big infusion of capital to continue funding that growth. "We want a partnership that can bring us money, but also knowledge," he says.
By the time Anker and Ferneau made it off the chairlift, Ferneau, who also teaches at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., mentioned that Anker might want to explore working with business school students. As the pair stood at the top of the Little White Cap chairlift, Ferneau told Anker that students could spend a semester analyzing the company's business plan and marketing strategy ˆ the kind of work that could pay big dividends for Grandy Oats. "Students are looking for concrete ways to apply their newfound skills, and they're always itching to work with companies," says Ferneau. "And startups are always eager to get the smart guys who six months from now will be working at places like Goldman Sachs or [consulting firm] McKinsey & Co."
Practice runs
Zach Conover, president and CEO of CrossRate Technology, says he received plenty of useful feedback from the investors he met at Peak Pitch. His company, which is producing technology that aims to improve the reliability of GPS and LORAN navigational systems, has raised money primarily through what Conover calls the "extended friends and family" round of financing. But that funding, along with a $160,000 development award received last June from the Maine Technology Institute, can only get CrossRate so far, says Conover.
Now, the company is hoping to raise roughly $2 million from the venture community to fund the beta testing of its product and hire a sales and marketing team. Conover says he's made plenty of cold calls to venture capital firms, trying to set up face-to-face meetings. But that's often easier said than done. "Anybody who's [cold-called] before can tell you that it doesn't get you that far," he says. "It can be months of work to network to the right person so the meeting is productive and not just a five minute phone call."
The appeal of Peak Pitch, however, was being able to network with roughly 50 investors and fellow entrepreneurs, says Conover. Before hitting the slopes, CrossRate was selected to give a sample pitch to Ferneau to kick off the event in the base lodge early that morning. Thanks to that sample pitch ˆ which lasted no more than a few minutes ˆ each investor he spoke with later in the day knew, at least in broad terms, about CrossRate Technology. "It turned the lift rides into more of a Q&A," says Conover. "That type of opportunity, you can work and work and sometimes things like that fall into your lap."
For Leo Corcoran, CEO of ClaimVantage, a Falmouth startup designing software for the insurance industry, Peak Pitch was good practice for his eventual funding search. Corcoran says ClaimVantage has plenty of cash to make it through the next 15 or so months, but that he's beginning to test the venture capital waters in hopes of cultivating relationships with investors that he can tap later. Each lift ride and each pitch helped him further hone his speech. "I think it improved during the morning," he says. "I went down about eight times and I was exhausted."
Corcoran wasn't alone. By early afternoon, most participants were running out of steam after a morning of pitching, chatting and pushing down the slopes through heavy spring snow. At half past noon, the skis and snowboards came off and the Peak Pitch party moved onto the sun deck behind the White Cap lodge for a lunch of burgers and sausages. The change in scenery didn't put a stop to the conversations between entrepreneurs and investors, which is exactly what Borealis Ventures' Ferneau says he hopes to see at these events. "We're really just trying to rally the region's entrepreneurial community," he says. "We don't have as many elevators up here, but we do have a lot of ski lifts."
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