When I talk to fellow Boiseans about what's needed to jump start our local tech ecosystem, we all agree that we have all the right pieces.

Boise has great entrepreneurs. We have great companies, ranging from the big guys down to the fresh start-up. We have good support organizations and service providers. We have talented people and are attracting new people with great experience from the more tech developed coastal areas. We even have readily accessible early stage funding. What we are lacking is true seed level funding.

Fund raising has never been easy, and right now it is especially difficult. Not so long ago an entrepreneur could pull some money out of saving or use some of their home equity to fund the idea. Those aren't really options anymore for most.

And even when the economy stabilizes and the traditional funding avenues ease up, we are still going to have a gap. How does the engineer who recently finds themselves out of work fund that great idea they've been sitting on?

Funding Options:

Boise Angel Alliance - BAA is a great group of accredited investors with a wealth of experience. The main focus of BAA has shifted from a group of individual investors to a fund.

Boise Angel Fund - BAF is a brand new fund. From what I understand, BAF raised a little under 1 Million for their first fund and is associated with the RAIN Fund Network. In most markets Angel investors are the place to go for pre-revenue, early stage funding. The problem is that BAA and BAF don't seem that interested in pre-revenue companies:

We typically invest in businesses that are generating revenue, and can provide customer references. If companies are pre-revenue, they must be prepared to demonstrate the market viability of their offering.

Keiretsu Forum - Keiretsu is like BAA but on steroids. They have Angel networks all across the west and several overseas. Keiretsu has already funded substantial deals here locally. Both PakSense and Banshee River Boards raised money comparable to what you would get from early stage VC funding. The biggest problem for pre-revenue companies is that it's a pay-to-play model and in order to present you need to pay $6K to get in the door.

Highway 12 Ventures - VC's don't typically do seed funding. This isn't because they aren't interested. In fact smaller funds like Highway 12 want to talk to start-ups as early as possible. It's just that VC money is *expensive*. VC's are fund managers. At the end of their fund they have to return a profit to their investors. This means you have a relatively short window of time to launch, scale, and exit (either by being acquired or going public) before the fund is due. Very few businesses can do this starting at pre-revenue. However if you are pre-revenue and have the right idea, Highway 12 is probably your best bet here in Boise. (Full disclose, I am the EIR at Highway 12 Ventures)

Individual Angels - There are several individual Angel Investors in Idaho. They aren't aligned with BAA or Keiretsu and unless you know who they are, or know someone who know's them, they are very hard to find.

Government Grants - If you have the right type of business there are a lot of government funding opportunities out there. But you have to have the right type of business, and often new pre-revenue companies are at a serious disadvantage to the established players who know how to work the system. We have had some success here and here. If you're interested in this option the crew at TechConnect can help you out.

Unlike some people, I don't think Boise needs more Investment Capital, with one exception: Pre-revenue seed funding.

I have talked with a lot of people about this. I think this would be one of the easier challenges we have to fix. I have some ideas, but no real solution yet. I think if one person, with the right connections (aka interested investors) were to be the champion behind this we could get something done pretty quickly.

So if you're interested in solving this problem shoot me an email tac@techboise.com.

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