Stage
We invest when a company has found its product-market fit and is ready to scale. Software, hardware and services companies should have deployed a version of their solution to early adopters and should be able to demonstrate an understanding of their sales process and the market’s willingness to pay. Life sciences companies should have generated data that validate the efficacy of their solution, and should understand their development costs, regulatory pathway and potential partners.

Amount
Our initial investments are generally part of a large Seed round, in which the company is raising $1 million to $5 million to enable at least 18 months of runway. In these rounds, we will typically invest between $200,000 – $500,000, and we can often help identify additional investors if needed. In most cases, we expect that the company will require additional investment in the coming years, and we therefore reserve sufficient capital to participate in the follow-on rounds of our best-performing portfolio companies.

Sectors
Over the past two decades, we’ve invested in a wide variety of technologies and industry sectors, ranging from software to life sciences and everything in-between. In general, we’re looking for ideas that have the potential to disrupt billion-dollar markets, and teams that possess a deep understanding of the sectors in which they compete.

Location
We meet and communicate frequently with our portfolio companies, and prefer to invest within a 6-hour driving distance from our offices in Pittsburgh, PA and Morgantown, WV. We target the “greater Appalachian” region, including West Virginia, central & western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, eastern Kentucky, western Maryland, western Virginia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.