During the first six months of 2021, forty-two investors and I came together to form our third fund (SWAN Venture Fund) on the premise that the earliest entrepreneurs still need funding in the Pacific NW at the pre-seed, angel, and seed stages.

We closed our funding on June 30th and while we were about halfway through our fundraising, we invested into two companies: Algenesis and Stack Moxie (Automaton). We received investments from some of the more active members of the the Seattle Angel community and some Family Offices.

For Fund 3, we are diversifying our investments into 10-15 companies from January 2021 through the end of 2023, with some reserve for follow-on investments. We are stage-focused, not industry-focused. We invest based upon the expertise of our team and investors, when entrepreneurs are a fit with us, and when we have reviewed and formed our own independent exit hypothesis for a company. An exit hypothesis means that we believe that the company has potential to scale to an acquisition or IPO where we can return the fund to our Limited Partners. Diversification for us means that we consider companies from different industries and different business models.

Like the last two funds, we are strictly investing in interesting opportunities in the United States and Canada, mostly in the the Pacific NW, but occasionally in the western American states and Canadian provinces. We do not invest outside of the US and Canada. We pay attention to traction and how entrepreneurs interact with us. We move faster than most angel groups, but still take our time to get to know the entrepreneurs we are considering in the PNW region. We expect that Entrepreneurs who are also in search of good investor partner will take the time they need as well.