Serial entrepreneur Dan Voell has launched a new Milwaukee-based venture capital fund called Forward Capital Fund.
Voell is working to raise $10 million to invest in startups in Wisconsin. Forward Capital is part of the Badger Fund of Funds initiative.
Voell, 40, co-founded a precision grinding company in Port Washington, which manufactures implantable medical device components. He helped grow that firm to a $1 million annual run rate in 22 months. Voell previously was a co-founder of defunct startup GoBuzz out of Milwaukee and president of former startup GameFilm360 in Mission Viejo, California. On the finance side, Voell was previously a business banker at Town and Country Bank in Watertown, managed fixed income products for large corporations such as Google at UBS and worked at Brookfield angel investment firm Golden Angel Network. He holds a bachelor’s in finance, investments and banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Marquette University.
With his background, Voell said he is uniquely suited to his new role.
“There aren’t a ton of investors in town that have gone through the operational side of startups and understand it from the inside,” he said.
Forward Capital Fund will make seed investments of around $500,000 in pre-revenue companies. Voell is particularly focused on investing in advanced manufacturing, spinouts, software and other technologies in the Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha areas.
“I think that there is an unmet need between private equity firms focusing on established businesses and venture capital firms focusing on asset-light startups,” Voell said. “There aren’t as many options for startups with an asset or hardware component.”
The State of Wisconsin awarded $25 million to Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Sun Mountain Capital and Stoughton-based Kegonsa Capital Partners LLC in 2013 to establish the Badger Fund of Funds, which raised another $10 million from the private sector and agreed to create the six to eight venture capital firms across the state. Voell is the sixth fund manager to start a Badger Fund, and the second in Milwaukee. There is also a seventh and final Badger Fund of Funds manager that has a contingent commitment to launch a growth venture capital fund in Wisconsin. That fund manager has not yet been named.
The other fund managers they have selected have so far publicly established the Idea Fund of La Crosse, Winnebago Seed Fund LP in Neenah, Rock River Capital Partners Fund I in Madison, The Winnow Fund for college entrepreneurs in Madison, and Milwaukee-based Bold Coast Capital Fund I L.P. Each fund manager is either raising or has raised its own venture capital fund to invest exclusively in Wisconsin companies, and BFOF matches 40 percent of that total.
With six Badger Funds launched, as well as independent venture capital funds such as Dark Knight Capital and corporate venture funds including Wisconn Valley Venture Fund coming online over the last couple of years, Milwaukee has more VC activity than in years past.
But Voell said he is not concerned about competition for investor funding.
“A rising tide moves all ships. The more participants in the community, the better for startups, and hopefully we can collaborate to move the community,” he said.
