NM Angels post record investments in ’16
$1.95M dispersed into 11 startup deals
The New Mexico Angels hit a new annual investment record in 2016, with $1.95 million pumped into 11 deals with startup companies.
That’s up from the group’s previous annual peak of $1.41 million in 2013.
“It was a great year — our largest investment year ever,” President John Chavez said at the group’s annual dinner this month in Albuquerque.
The Angels, which formed in 1999, pool the resources of about 70 individual investors to provide seed and early-stage capital to startups. The group has been particularly active in recent years, helping to keep local, early-stage investment flowing in New Mexico after the recession hit in 2008, making startup capital harder to come by.
The Angels have invested nearly $12 million in 49 deals in the past nine years, although many of those were follow-on investments in companies that had previously received capital from the group, but that needed more money to keep growing. Last year, eight of the Angel’s 11 deals were follow-ons. The remaining three provided money for newly formed startups, Chavez said.
The group has spread its wings across the state, conducting educational events and seeking deals in cooperation with the state’s research universities, national laboratories and business incubators.
“We need people like the Angels who are willing to give before they get, and who take a long-term attitude in helping to build our ecosystem,” said Gary Oppedahl, Albuquerque’s economic development director.
The group also unveiled its new logo at the dinner, after receiving dozens of entries from graphic designers in a statewide competition. Kameron Elder, a selftaught artist and student at both the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College, won the contest with rainbow-colored angel wings topped by the slogan “Investing in Innovation.”
The wings are a branding symbol to express “freedom and upward progression,” while the colors reflect the state’s “amazing sunsets,” Elder said.