This April 2018, thirty-five investors and I came together to form the second SWAN Venture Fund on the premise that entrepreneurs still need funding in the Pacific NW. That hasn’t changed much since my last announcement for our first fund.

For Fund 2, we are diversifying our investments into 9-10 companies. We are stage-focused, not industry-focused. We invest based upon the expertise of our team, when entrepreneurs are a fit with us, and when we have reviewed and formed our own independent exit hypothesis for a company. Diversification for us means that we consider companies from different industries and different business models.

We like to find interesting opportunities in unexpected places. We pay attention to traction and how entrepreneurs interact with us. We move faster than most angel groups in the region and do a better job of due diligence. We know that the quality of the relationships we have with our entrepreneurs comes from our process; we make better investments as a result, but we say “no” more. When we do say no, it is often because of fit or something doesn’t quite meet our strategy.

There are more opportunities to find capital in the Pacific Northwest since 2015. Few if any are investing purely in Pacific Northwest seed-stage companies like we are, and fewer are investing as broadly as we are.