Grey Collar Ventures
645 Third Street, Beloit, WI, 53511, United States
Overview
Grey Collar Ventures (GCV) invests in early-stage, industry-disrupting startups who are committed to leveraging Beloit’s unique entrepreneurial ecosystem and scaling their ideas in our community. We exist to support innovators, risk-takers, and job creators. Along with Hendricks Commercial Properties, a real estate development company founded in 1974 by American business woman, Diane Hendricks, and Irontek, a Hendricks-owned downtown coworking space and tech hub, GCV supports the company-wide directive to "Build Beloit".
- Total investments
- 2
- Lead investments
- 2
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 0
Investment portfolio
- Beloit Kombucha Company
Led · Seed · Aug 2023
Beloit Kombucha produces organic kombucha beverages formulated with a specific probiotic called BC30. The company launched with a blueberry mint flavor and plans to add watermelon, berry hibiscus and green apple later this year. It sells online and is available on Amazon, with plans to expand its retail presence across the Midwest and nationwide. Beloit Kombucha intends to use new funding to expand production capacity, introduce new flavors and increase marketing efforts. The company is led by CEO Josh Sizemore and is based in Beloit, Wisconsin. The business recently closed a seed financing round to support these growth initiatives.
- Blue Line Battery
Led · Equity · Apr 2020
Blue Line Battery produces a full line of maintenance-free lithium-ion batteries for forklifts, pallet jacks, electric vehicles and other handling equipment, sold through a national distributor network. The batteries eliminate watering, equalizing and swapping required by lead-acid units and address safety and weight issues cited with 1,500–4,500 pound lead-acid packs. CEO Dustin Herte launched the company in 2017 after working on high-performance electric bikes and adapting that battery expertise to warehouse equipment. The company was initially bootstrapped and received early support from Whitewater’s Community Development Authority, the Whitewater University Innovation Center and accelerator gBETA in Beloit. Blue Line says it has overcome early economic hardship and product-development challenges to bring its technology into warehouses. Management plans to use the latest funding to continue developing its energy-storage technology and to pursue stationary energy-storage opportunities in the solar market, which Herte says is roughly twice the size of forklift operations.
Team
No current team members are available.