Improved Arkansas Deal Flow Focus of Innovate Piece in AB
This week's Arkansas Business includes a bonus Innovate page, and its focus is on the improved deal flow in Arkansas, especially for early and seed-stage startups.
In the last six years, IA director Tom Dalton says IA client firms have raised $197 million in private capital. As the Arkansas deal flow has increased, so too have funding options.
A sample from this week's AB:
Innovate Arkansas Director Tom Dalton remembers when Fund for Arkansas’ Future was the only seed-capital game in town, but plenty to accommodate the number of tech entrepreneurs seeking funding.
“When the Innovate Arkansas program began in 2008, I remember a public meeting of business leaders in which Jeff Stinson, the managing director of FAF, lamented the fact that his fund, having recently completed a $6 million raise, was having a great deal of problem with deal flow,” Dalton said. “Viable, promising startups were simply not coming to FAF in sufficient numbers. Where structured funds like to see six to eight deals in a month, FAF was receiving only three or four in a quarter.”...
...Dalton said the increased deal flow attracted the growth of Arkansas angels, and the existence of more angel options helped encourage more tech-based entrepreneurs to take the plunge.
“What has also developed in the last seven years, and this has been the added benefit resulting from Innovate Arkansas, has been the increase in the number of private investment options in Arkansas,” Dalton said. “It’s important here to note that Arkansas is not unique in its local investment situation. Increasingly, venture capital funds are moving upstream, providing larger amounts to fewer companies, but those with potential higher return opportunities. As that has evolved over the years, mid-market regions such as northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas become more dependent on local angel investors moving in to address the needs of the earlier startups. And this is precisely what has happened here.”
Read the full story here. And here's a list of specific funding options available to Arkansas startups.