Fund Facts: Dale Grogan, Charter Capital Partners

Fund Facts is a new video series focused on venture capitalists, angel investors and other funders critical to Michigan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

On this episode of Fund Facts, we connect with Dale Grogan, managing director of Charter Capital Partners’ Michigan Accelerator Fund I (MAF-1). MAF-1 is a venture capital fund that invests in early stage Michigan companies, with a focus on those within the life sciences technologies sector.

Since 1991, Grand Rapids-based Charter Capital Partners has helped lower middle market clients — companies with annual revenue in the range of $5 million to $50 million — meet or exceed their capital goals through services like capital raises, business valuation, exit planning and business sale. The Charter Capital Partner team offers an array of industry expertise with keen insights in three targeted segments: contract furniture, life sciences and financial institutions.

In this video, Dale sits down with the MEDC and shares key insights about Charter Capital Partners, the type of companies it works with and tips to help entrepreneurs and startups secure funding. Some of these include:

• Charter Capital Partners invests in startups that have overcome early stage hurdles. Whether regulatory or manufacturing, startups that have knocked down more hurdles are more favorable investments.
• To garner attention from investors, entrepreneurs should focus on what makes their company unique. Entrepreneurs should be able to clearly identify the revolutionary growth, or the problem, their innovation can fix. Equally important is the ability to put together a team that can implement a well-executed plan and demonstrate success to investors.
• Charter Capital Partners has invested in Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing (GRAM), a contract manufacturing company that provides clinical trial and commercial material in vials or syringes for the life sciences industry. The MEDC also worked with GRAM to ensure continued growth throughout the region by supporting the company’s expansion to a new location in Grand Rapids where it invested $60 million in the region and created 107 new jobs.

If you’ve got a high-tech start-up idea you’d like to explore further and don’t know where to start, contact the Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Initiative at 888-522-0103 or visit https://www.michiganbusiness.org/entrepreneurship.

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