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The Venture Codex

Founders Capital Partners

1615 Lasuen Road, Santa Barbara, CA, 93103, United States

Overview

Founders Capital Partners (FCP) is a group of "angel investors" - individuals who invest in early-stage, technology-based businesses. We tend to be the first investors beyond "friends and family". If traditional venture firms have already invested, it is generally too late for us to become involved. We are a group of some 40 individual investors - active and retired entrepreneurs, executives, industrial and academic scientists and engineers. All are accredited investors. Participation by individuals in any given project is their own decision, based on their interests and their perception of risk/reward. The Managing Partner is L. Robert Johnson. Bob is the point man for investment activity. Other individuals get involved based on their own interests, but this is generally limited to being available for specific advice where they have relevant experience or expertise. The size of our investments historically has ranged from a low of $100,000 to a high of $5 million. Our "sweet spot" is $250,000-750,000. Primary areas of interest include using (1) software, the Internet, and domain expertise to provide business and healthcare services, and (2) sensor, electronic and mechanical technologies applied to life sciences, imaging, monitoring, and similar industrial applications. Our focus is industrial products and services. We do not invest in consumer or fashion businesses. Investment activity is focused principally, but not exclusively, in the Central Coast region of California. We are usually involved as an adviser to any company we invest in. This includes board representation, advice on building the management team, financing strategy, and business and personnel problems in general. Because of our continuing active involvement, we are limited as to how many companies we can work with at any given time. As a practical matter, we seem to do one deal a year.

Total investments
1
Lead investments
0
Investments · 12mo
0
Active investors
1
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Investment portfolio

  • Preciate

    Participated · Seed · Jan 2021

    Preciate is a Dallas, TX-based platform that helps businesses and teams grow authentic relationships through virtual business socials and peer-recognition technology. Its flagship product, Preciate Social, is a fully immersive virtual socializing platform that replicates real-life business socials and mixers. The company’s patent-pending Social PresenceTM technology enables users to move toward or away from people to start conversations, hear background noise, and give toasts. Preciate Social supports customizable event backgrounds and music, the ability to hire live performers, and a Convos feature that provides built-in ice breakers. Preciate closed a $4.6M seed round and intends to use the funds to scale product development, expand marketing, and hire across multiple roles. Ed Stevens is CEO and co-founder.

Team