For Entrepreneurs

There are three good ways to get our attention.

Get someone we know to introduce you to us.

Apply for (and hopefully win) an NC IDEA Grant. About 1/2 of our portfolio investments came to us from the NC IDEA grant process.

Submit your idea/plan via this website. Make sure to include a referral source.

What We Look For

We invest in people. Even though we are called IDEA Fund Partners, we don't really invest in ideas. We invest in people. If you have a great idea, but not a great team, start to build one. We might be able to help you build a team, but you should not count on that.

We like innovation. The overarching theme that we seek across our investments is "innovation". We like innovative ideas, innovative business models, innovative approaches, innovative people. We don't like "me too" concepts. It is too hard to win with those.

We look for companies, not themes. Because we are geographically focused and because we think good opportunities exist in every sector, we look for good companies, not investment themes.