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, Institutional 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.
