Early Stage Investing
David J. Greer
David J. Greer is an active early stage investor in Vancouver, BC. Mr. Greer looks at over one hundred business plans a year, carefully choosing which companies to get involved with. Here we document the early stage funds and companies that Mr. Greer has invested in.
Early stage investors (often called Angel investors) collectively invest more money into companies than all Venture Capitalists combined. While billions of dollars are being invested into early stage companies, best practices and guidelines for early stage investing are still being developed.
Resources
There are numerous books, white papers, and online resources on early stage investing. Here are some resources we use:
Vancouver Angel Technology Network.
The web site includes a lot of valuable information both for people looking to invest in
early stage technology companies and company founders seeking funds for their business.
Angel Blog. A blog hosted by Dr. Basil Peters, fund manager for the
Fundamental Technologies II early stage
fund and a well-known Vancouver-based entrepreneur and early stage investor.
The Angel Journal. An online resource primarily focused in the US, which also offers a paid
subscription service for a weekly angel newsletter.
Angel Capital Education Foundation. Founded by the
Kauffman Foundation, the Angel Capital Education
Foundation is devoted to education and research angel investing. Their web site includes an
extensive list of North American angel networks.
Angel Capital Association. The Angel Capital Association is North
America's professional alliance of angel groups. See their
research resources for a number of academic papers on early stage investing.
The Western Universities Technology Innovation Fund was created by Mike Volker. Mr. Volker is one of Vancouver's best known early stage investors having spent decades investing, developing, and mentoring young technology companies. Mr. Volker co invests WUTIF funds along with other early stage investors from his network.
Mr. Greer is an investor in Backbone Systems. Backbone Systems provides small and medium businesses with lower cost and more reliable information technology solutions. The key technology trends of widely available and highly reliable internet connections combined with new virtualization technologies, allows Backbone Systems to offer its products as lower-cost and highly reliable services available over the Internet.
In 2005, Mr. Greer was one of the original investors in MailChannels, a leader in the next generation of technologies in email security to prevent wasteful and harmful email such as spam and viruses. Mr. Greer was also an independent Director of MailChannels for three years. In 2007, MailChannels was the winner of the MIT Spam Conference best paper award which garnered coverage in The Washington Post. MailChannels customers include Wyeth, a Fortune 150 pharmaceutical company, Cornel and Northeastern University, Sunflower Broadband, an ISP based in Kansas, and the City of Richmond in British Columbia, Canada.
Paradigm Environmental is a Vancouver-based company whose Microslude technology enables waste water treatment plants around the world to double their capacity. In 2006, Paradigm won a Technology Impact Award from the British Columbia Technology Industry Association. Mr. Greer first invested in Paradigm Environmental in 2005.