Tundra Angels photo
Matthew Kee is on a mission to be the investor he needed when embarking on his startup journey.
A startup founder in the financial technology space, Kee moved to Green Bay in 2016 while in the early stages of seeking investment for his business.
“There were very few onramps I had to the [local] startup and investor ecosystem,” Kee says. “Being that I wasn’t from the area, I didn’t have any pre-existing connections or phone calls that I could place.”
Even still, Kee’s company was able to build out a software product and went through two startup accelerators, gBeta and the FIS Startup Accelerator, raising venture capital from a Fortune 500 financial technology company — but it wasn’t without challenges.
“What I found over time was that there were investors in the area, but they were largely disconnected from one another and highly fragmented across the city and the region,” Kee says.
But Tundra Angels, of which Kee is founding manager, is working to change that. The membership-based angel investors network invests in high-growth startup companies around Wisconsin. The network launched in July 2020 with six members and today has 30 spanning Northeast Wisconsin, many of whom are founders, CEOs and owners of their respective companies.
The network brings a pool of active investors together with entrepreneurs seeking capital. In less than three years, Tundra Angels has invested a total of $1.8 million in 12 Wisconsin startups.
“I want to help other people who are like me because there are many people like me,” Kee says. “I’m grateful to have this opportunity to make this the best experience possible, the experience that I wish I had when I was fundraising.”
Strides are being made. The investor landscape in the New North is starting to gain ground with the formation of angel networks like Tundra Angels and early-stage venture capital firms like Green Bay’s TitletownTech.
Kee believes that Northeast Wisconsin’s fledgling entrepreneurial ecosystem presents a two-fold advantage.
“We are in the early innings as it relates to our startup and investor ecosystem in Northeast Wisconsin,” he says. “The opportunity doesn’t only exist on the investor side, but on the startup side, empowering the next generation of high-growth entrepreneurs to build their businesses here.”
Accelerating the ecosystem
Kee’s enthusiasm for the New North region is warranted — the data backs him up.
According to the Wisconsin Tech Council and the Tech Council Investor Networks’ 2022 Wisconsin Portfolio, which tracks entrepreneurial investment and venture capital throughout the state, Wisconsin’s entrepreneurs raised more than $868 million in 2021 — the most risk capital investment recorded since the inception of the Wisconsin Portfolio in 2008.
But it was Northeast Wisconsin specifically that caught the attention of Joe Kremer, director of the Tech Council Investor Networks.
While compiling data for the 2022 Wisconsin Portfolio, Kremer found that the New North region more than doubled its number of deals raised by early-stage entrepreneurs, from six in 2020 to 15 in 2021.
“That was by far the biggest growth of any of the [state’s] regions from 2020 to 2021,” says Kremer, a De Pere native who recalls when the New North wasn’t exactly known for its robust investor scene.
Kremer says today there are about 50 active investment groups around the state, and much of this growth is the result of intentional ecosystem building on the part of investor groups, local chambers of commerce and economic development organizations like New North, Inc.
“Almost 20 years ago, I was trying to get an angel network going in Green Bay and just to find someone you could talk to who understood what early-stage investment was, was super hard,” Kremer remembers. “Now fast forward 20 years, you got Tundra Angels. Also you have this gravitational pull of TitletownTech, which is able to bring significant dollars into the area, really helping to legitimize the whole concept of being an entrepreneur.”
This is music to the ears of Laurie Radke, president and CEO of the Greater Green Bay Chamber, which identified building a robust ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship as a key initiative in its 2017 economic development strategic plan.
“Through listening sessions, we really identified a weakness in our entrepreneurial ecosystem, and one of the pieces that was missing from it certainly was the whole angel investment opportunity,” she says.
Kee led the formation of Tundra Angels under the chamber’s direction, and as of May 31, 2022 it became a privately held LLC. Radke says this is an indication of increased investment activity and need in the area.
“The chamber’s job is to help identify gaps in the community, and this was a gap where we were able to plant the seed and let it grow,” she says. “Taking it out from underneath the chamber umbrella and letting it stand alone will [help it] continue to grow, flourish and meet the needs of the community.”
Kremer notes that 2021 was an anomalous year in terms of high investment growth across the country. Wisconsin, and its Northeast region included, were no exceptions. While Kremer anticipates 2022 investment totals to be lower than 2021, the overall upward trend is expected to continue when comparing 2020 totals.
“Over the last 20 years in Northeast Wisconsin, you’ve had a lot of people really focused on improving this entrepreneurial economy and it’s paying off,” Kremer says.
The next wave
TitletownTech, which was formed in 2019 from a partnership between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers, has invested in 26 companies over its two funds, with initial check sizes ranging from $200,000 to $2 million. The venture capital firm invests across six verticals that represent strengths core to the region, including sectors such as digital health, agriculture, and supply chain and logistics.
TitletownTech Partner Cordero Barkley sees Northeast Wisconsin’s historic reputation for innovation as a key advantage to its future success in the technology space. He points to several TitletownTech portfolio companies — like ChemDirect’s online industrial chemical marketplace and Fork Farms, vertical hydroponic farming technology — as prime examples of that innovation.
“Everybody knows that [Wisconsin] still lags some of our neighboring states, but we definitely have had year-over-year growth when it comes to capital deployed,” Barkley says. “And I think you’re starting to see more outside investors realize that there’s real opportunities here. When you look at the valuations and the type of problems that are being solved in the Midwest, we’re solving very real problems here.”
And he’s right about out-of-state investors — the 2022 Wisconsin Portfolio revealed that 90 venture capital funds from outside Wisconsin took part in 42 separate early-stage deals in 2021, a record for that class of investor interest outside the state. “The previous high, according to research by the Wisconsin Technology Council, was 55 such investors in 31 deals in 2020,” the Wisconsin Portfolio states.
The rise in out-of-state investors can be partially explained by co-investing, or when multiple venture funds invest in a deal simultaneously. This becomes more prevalent as larger local firms bring deals to their networks nationwide.
“I think we’re on our next wave,” Barkley says. “You’re seeing funds pop up across the state, founders come back and start funds here, and you see unique partnerships like with the Packers and Microsoft [proving] technology happens here and will continue to happen here.”
A big growth indicator for Kee is the organic, word-of-mouth expansion of investor networks like Tundra Angels that points to an increased appetite — and awareness — for angel and venture investing in Northeast Wisconsin.
Kee describes his vantage point as the “Google Street View” of what’s happening with angel investors locally. And from his perspective, the energy is palpable.
“That’s honestly one of the things that makes me so excited about the future of Northeast Wisconsin. It’s people who have never even thought about angel investing [who are] all of a sudden like, ‘Yes, I want to do that,’” Kee says. “It’s that level of enthusiasm that I pay attention to, and it’s on a strong trajectory.”
To read the full 2022 Wisconsin Portfolio, visit wisconsintechnologycouncil.com.
