What Sectors and Stage Does Grape Arbor Target?
Grape Arbor has made investments in advertising/marketing
online, web 2.0/social networking, financial services (tech and non-tech), and software/web-enhanced
services. While a number of our investments have been into companies with products at the
pre-beta stage, we did make one initial
investment into a company which, at the time, had roughly $15MM of trailing 12
month revenue. In general, however, we target early stage companies with
a little revenue (several hundred thousand to several million in trailing 12 month revenue).
All of the companies we consider seriously have a clear strategy for attacking a large and rapidly growing
addressable market as well as a strong (even if not complete) management team.
What Value Do We Add?
You'd have to ask our
entrepreneurs and co-investors, but as committed repeat players in the space, we have many relationships and have worked with
numerous start-ups as they cycled through the angel and venture process through to exit. Our bios will give you a sense of
the depth and breadth of our experience in and commitment to the space. Collectively, our team has worked
in or with hundreds of angel and venture-backed companies. For people with whom
we enter serious investment discussions, we are happy to provide references.
What is the best way to get a plan in front of Grape Arbor LLC?
To
date, every single Grape Arbor LLC investment was 'warmly introduced' to us. In other words, we invested based on
the strength of a pre-existing relationship with the management team or our co-investors. Grape Arbor's members are fortunate
to have relationships with numerous venture funds and angel investors. We have made investments in which our co-investors
have been, among others: First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Carlyle, Insight Venture Partners, Vision Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners and others. This does not mean that
we will only invest where we have a preexisting relationship, but if you want to send us a business plan, we strongly urge
you to do so by approaching someone with whom we have a pre-existing relationship (you can try to determine that based on
reviewing our bios online). We have found that reviewing plans that come to us 'cold' would negatively impact
our day jobs! Several of our members also founded and co-chair AngelVineVC -- www.angelvinevc.com -- a leading network of venture and angel investors headquartered in NYC --
all of our members participate in and support AngelVineVC. AngelvineVC does screen plans
that are sent 'cold' -- though AngelVineVC's hit rate weights heavily toward warmly introduced plans. Please note
that Grape Arbor LLC is not an affiliate of AngelVineVC; the two are entirely separate endeavors.
