Rockies Venture Club
Rockies Venture Club has seen a measurable uptick in the number and quality of CyberSecurity deals emerging from the Colorado startup ecosystem.
DENVER (PRWEB) May 04, 2018
Rockies Venture Club (RVC) is proud to announce that it led and closed six funding rounds in the part of 2018. This accomplishment marks the club as one of the most active Angel investing groups in the state of Colorado. RVC brings together syndicates of individual Angel investors and Angel groups from outside the state. RVC closed funding rounds for the Colorado-based companies OverWatchID, PharmaJet, Swimlane, The Food Corridor, Vartega Carbon Fiber, and the Vortic Watch Company.
Two of these ventures, OverWatchID and Swimlane are innovating within the red-hot CyberSecurity space. OverWatchID prevents privileged user credentials from being compromised, a problem that is responsible for over 90% of major data breaches. They were recently accepted into Plug and Play Tech Center’s inaugural CyberSecurity accelerator cohort and have been rapidly acquiring notable customers. RVC’s Director of Operations, Dave Harris shared, “Rockies Venture Club has seen a measurable uptick in the number and quality of CyberSecurity deals emerging from the Colorado startup ecosystem. We believe that this coincides with the growing need for security solutions, as well as the fact that Colorado has a strong CyberSecurity history. Ping Identity’s exit to Vista Equity Partners back in 2016 is one excellent example of the potential for CyberSecurity startups in our state.” Alongside OverWatchID, RVC investors funded a second round for Swimlane, a solution for cyber security professionals to better automate their response to security attacks.
RVC also invested in Vartega Carbon Fiber, an advanced manufacturing company that is recycling carbon fiber for uses in the aerospace, automotive, and recreation industries. The Vartega process avoids degradation of carbon fiber, lowering its cost and opening the industry to new applications such as 3-D printing. In this investment round, RVC investors formed a syndicate with a number of other Angel groups from around the US and invested alongside the Techstars Mobility accelerator in Detroit, which Vartega graduated from in 2017. Peter Adams, RVC’s Executive Director said, “We have known Vartega CEO, Andrew Maxey for a couple of years now. It has been fascinating to see the company iterate upon its model to get something that the industry is ready to adopt.”
Rockies Venture Club also recently hosted a successful Angel Capital Summit. The pitches from 25 startup companies received the highest investor interest in the club’s 33 year history. The ventures receiving the most investor interest are currently going through the club’s industry leading due diligence program and will be opening their funding rounds for investment shortly. Beyond these activities RVC is partnering with the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade to host the first CO Advanced Industries Night on May 9th, and is currently accepting applications for its Impact HyperAccelerator program that kicks off on June 18th.