I hope everyone had a great Holiday season and an early Happy New Year! 2022 is going to be a big year for the Triangle startup ecosystem and the Tweener List is going to be super active (covid-willing). Some of the activities we have planned:
- Tweener List 2022 - Will be published 2/15-3/1 this year, stay tuned.
- Tweener Award ceremony - We’re targeting March/April for a get together. if covid is still a concern, we’ll aim to do something with an outside component.
- Tweener get togethers - Many of you have requested that we do more informal social gatherings with an entrepreneur-only focus. We’ve got so much activity in the area, there hasn’t been a great way for everyone to get together. We’re working on this and any ideas are welcome.
Announcing the Tweener Fund!
The biggest change for 2022 is we have launched the Tweener Fund. The reader’s digest version of the ‘why’ and the ‘what’:
- I’ve often had requests and also wanted to start a vehicle that invests in Tweeners both to support the local startup ecosystem, but also because I think it may be a good investment ‘basket’ of companies.
- I couldn’t find a good vehicle until AngelList launched rolling funds.
- Investors must be accredited and the minimum commitment is 4 quarters (1yr) at $5k/Q or $20k for the first year. After that the nice thing about the rolling fund is you can pause a quarter, go up or down a quarter (above the min). You can sign up for Q1 2022 as late as the end of Feb, so there’s still plenty of time to get in on the first batch of investments which we’re already teeing up.
- We announced the fund mid-December and already have $400k for Q1 ready to go with a total commitment of ~$3m so far!
That’s a very strong start, but we’d love to have more participants in the fund. To learn more:
- Fund website: The fund’s website is at www.tweenerfund.com
- Self-service video pitch: I put together a ~40min ‘pitch’ for the fund that explains the fund’s strategy, rolling funds and other highlights. It is a recorded zoom here, or some folks have issues with that so here’s a docsend (best to download and play locally.
- Pitch deck: The pitch deck (covered in above video but also avail for download) is here.
- AngelList sign up page: The AngelList sign-up page is here and also includes the underlying legal docs, the FAQs for the rolling fund platform and is how you start the sign-up process.
You didn’t sign up to this newsletter to get Tweener Fund notifications, so I’ll be creating a separate substack for that, and also the Tweener Fund has it’s own social links that are brand spankin’ new on Twitter and LinkedIn.
If you know anyone that would be potentially interested in investing, feel free to forward this newsletter to them.
Buckle up!
In 2022 we are going to significantly ‘level-up’ our efforts to support the Triangle Tweeners and accelerate the Triangle’s startup ecosystem flywheel. Let me know if you have any ideas above and beyond what we have planned, if you want to help out in any way (event planning especially - not my strength) and definitely let me know of any companies over that magical 10 people or $1m annual run-rate that could be good candidates for the tweener list!
-Scot Wingo