Todd Welch of Charter Partners and Stuart Schooley founder and co-owner of Dutch Springs along with about a dozen other successful entrepreneurs founded the Lehigh Valley Angel Investors (LVAI) in 2010. Since that time, the group has grown to 36 members with the goal of 40. The purpose of LVAI group is to pool investment funds to provide seed or growth capital to start-up companies.
Each LVAI member is an accredited investor as defined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This means each individual has at least $1 million in net assets excluding the value of their home. Each member brings a diverse set of experiences and skills to properly assess risk.
Members decide individually whether to invest or not in each start-up after hearing presentations from pre-screened applications. Each investing member must pledge $5,000 and a collective minimum investment of $50,000 is required to proceed with Due Diligence (DD). Individual members, however, may contribute more money or none after reading the DD report.
The group meets the first Thursday of each month at Ben Franklin TechVentures, an incubator, located on the campus of Lehigh University. Our goal is to invest in promising companies in PA, NY, and NJ but focus primarily in Eastern Pennsylvania within a 100-mile radius of the Lehigh Valley.
Any start-up looking for seed money up to $200,000 should make application through our website: http://www.lehighvalleyangelinvestors.com. A submission should include an Executive Summary to help the Screening Committee to select the applicant before receiving an official invite to one of our monthly meetings.
