IVCA Feature: New Member Profile of 4490 Ventures |
IVCA Feature: New Member Profile of 4490 VenturesDecember 6, 2017 As the year wraps up, the membership of the Illinois Venture Capital Association keeps on growing. This creates new opportunities for membership interaction, the sharing of ideas and the expression of issues that concern venture capital, private equity and their support industries. The latest member of the IVCA is 4490 Ventures, a firm that is committed to generating more venture capital into the Midwest. Since then, we’ve been fortunate to have a handful of very large and sophisticated institutional LPs believe in our vision and strategy – as well as our ability to execute on it. We’re entrepreneurs at heart, and we’re building 4490 Ventures as a business that satisfies an unmet need in the marketplace. Strategically, we decided to construct our platform in a way that has long-term sustainability that survives beyond our individual investing careers. The IVCA community will hear more about the components of that platform in the near future. IVCA: Since you are an early stage investment firm, what is the philosophy behind finding the right entrepreneur for your investments? As for the origin-story of the opportunity, we look at the problem that the entrepreneur has chosen to solve. We then probe how well that entrepreneur knows this problem area – such as the overall economics that drive it, technology and other trends affecting it, plus competitive and substitute solutions – and what resources that entrepreneur can bring to bear on solving it. This includes intrinsic knowledge, future team members, early clients and other factors. IVCA: In your immediate area, where is the best potential entrepreneur base, and what is an example of a successful business out of the region that you nurtured, and why was it successful? |