Not afraid to invest from the beginning

It's not that easy to listen anymore to the whining of an entrepreneur who can't seem to find any capital here.

Getting capital is never easy, but for technology start-ups it's no longer all but impossible. There are several Chicago venture capital firms now regularly nosing around for good early stage investments. So are Arthur Ventures of Fargo and Foundry Group from Colorado.

And local entrepreneurs ought to be able to bump into the most prominent investor now providing that capital in the Twin Cities. He's Ryan Broshar of Matchstick Ventures. He's easy to find because he makes a point of being easy to find.

Broshar is not necessarily the next J.P. Morgan. Broshar just turned 31 this week, and he's been at the venture investing business only a year and a half. He doesn't even have an office.

He declined to say how much money he's raised so far for his new venture fund, his second, but the guess is it may not be even $5 million.

But that's enough to be a major player. That's because Broshar is one of those rare investors eager to put the first investor money into a young company.

This could mean leading a "seed round" as small as a couple of hundred thousand dollars. That amount of money won't buy an entrepreneur much new office furniture or fund a year of salaries for a dozen new software engineers, but it could be enough to really get a company launched.

That's what he's hoping to do. In business school it would be called "filling the start-up funding gap."

His first fund, launched in 2013 and branded as Confluence Capital Partners, invested in $50,000 to $100,000 chunks. At those bite sizes his capital stretched over 14 companies, just over half of them from the Twin Cities. One of them has already been acquired, a so-called "exit" that returns capital to the fund and its investors.

The launch of his second fund coincided with Broshar renaming his business Matchstick. The new fund's investors include the partners of Foundry Group, an early-stage venture capital firm that emerged out of the technology community of Boulder, Colo. Foundry's Seth Levine is among the people Broshar has recruited as an adviser.

With his new Matchstick fund Broshar is planning to go up to $150,000 for a first investment, also keeping some capital set aside for a possible second-round investment in some of the companies.

Broshar caught the bug for the venture business when living in Colorado, where he saw firsthand what was happening in Boulder. It's home to a major university, venture capitalists and more than one so-called accelerator to nurture start-ups.

The important lesson from Boulder, however, was to make sure that entrepreneurs, investors, advisers and academics all mixed together.

This formula certainly worked in Boulder. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2013 put Boulder at the very top of its list of the hottest regions for technology-oriented start-ups.

By the time that report came out, though, Broshar was on his way back to the Twin Cities. His plan was to do his part to make our region a little more like Boulder.

Today, Broshar is a regular at events for entrepreneurs and a regular speaker on panels. He has even co-founded his own event series, called Beta.MN. He invites the founders of companies he has invested in to meet for happy hour, letting them share ideas and ask advice over a beer.

"He's everywhere. He's approachable. He's open to sharing," said Casey Allen, the entrepreneur behind the new conference series called Enterprise Rising. "Angel investing and venture investing maybe five years ago was always this 'you are lucky if you are getting a meeting with me' kind of mentality. You didn't see somebody like Ryan putting so much energy and effort into trying to be approachable.

"Ryan Broshar will at least take a phone call with just about anybody."

Broshar said he isn't looking for investment opportunities just in the Twin Cities, but as he thinks of this market, he's convinced it's very close to turning into the kind of dynamic technology start-up scene he knew in Colorado. There are more than enough creative entrepreneurs. And they have all sorts of opportunities to meet each other — investors, academics and advisers — in settings both formal and informal.

In the critical area of access to capital, however, he rates the Twin Cities market as "needs improvement." He said there are some great signs in the financing market, though, including "being hit up once or twice a week from VCs not in this market, and it's always 'I hear great things about the Twin Cities, what are you seeing?'"

Even at "needs improvement," raising capital in 2015 is so much easier that it's even possible now to meet company founders who think of it as just another task on their to-do list.

The entrepreneur Joe Stanton, co-founder of Elevate Research of St. Paul, is one of them. His company sells software and services to help restaurateurs and retailers quickly gather feedback from their customers. He and co-founder John Cohoon started it, got some customers and then sought $200,000, all within months last year. They ended up raising $500,000.

"I didn't even know what a venture capitalist was," Stanton said. "So we put together a pitch in about a day, and met with Patrick Meenan [of Fargo-based Arthur Ventures]. Patrick said 'Really love it, but you are too early. But I know a guy who is definitely going to do this.' And he introduced us to Ryan."

Broshar's fund invested in the company, as did the VC firm now called Rally Ventures.

Stanton said he's now asked all the time by other founders about their chances of ever raising capital. He tells them it should be doable.

But as he put it, "It would be great if there was even more capital, and more people like Ryan who invest in really early-stage companies. Because Ryan really is different."

lee.schafer@startribune.com • 612-673-4302