Flamingo Funders
in the words of Elizabeth Hartman, co-founder
Background Jane Cooper and I were both members of Gulf South Angels — then it was NOLA Angel Network — around the same time and became friends. We couldn’t help but notice that there was an underrepresentation of women receiving capital. Gulf South Angels really works hard to seek out women and minority founders but nationally, the data show that women startup founders only get like a very small percentage of the venture capital that’s being invested. So, we started this organization to invest in women-led enterprises with around 10 original members in 2022.
How They Operate We’re sort of a micro network is the way I look at it. We’ve grown to about 25 members. We meet every other month, usually at some someone’s home, and then we’ll see sometimes one, sometimes two, last month we even had three pitches. We then have the founders leave and the members stay and discuss each pitch that we’ve seen and take a preliminary assessment of interest. If there’s enough interest — you know, five or six people, maybe more — we will schedule follow-up calls with the founders. From there, each member makes her own decision about whether to invest.
How Much They’ve Funded Our check sizes range from $2,500 to $5,000 sometimes $10,000, so small dollars, but we like to think that if we can get 10 women to write small checks like that it’s enough to get these very early-stage companies to the next level.
We want to teach other accredited women investors how to do this type of investing because it’s a high risk and many women have never been introduced to this type of investment before. We also want to support local women founders and help them to get to prime time capital.
What They’re Looking For The company needs to be at least 51% owned by a woman and located in or around New Orleans. We are industry agnostic. We look for an idea that can grow and to scale. We have an expression that we use, that we’re betting on the jockey rather than the horse — what we really want to see as a founder who’s going to do whatever it takes, within reason, of course, to make this happen. Because ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that is everything. But here we do help. We use our network of expertise to help with mentoring, business consulting, guidance and connections.
Investment History We’ve invested in six companies so far, with a total investment of about $240,000. The latest one is Kouture Express — a beauty product kiosk that’s tailored to HBCU students. It’s a small investment, but we hope it’s going to be enough to get her to the next stage. The owner has a contract with Southern University and is going to be putting her first kiosks in, I believe, this semester.
We’ve invested in Junum, led by Molly Hegerty, that is a tool that helps hospitals and doctors diagnose and treat malnutrition. She’s really at the tipping point I think. We’ve invested in Krewe Car, a woman that runs a sort of concierge car service with car seats and drivers who have all been background checked and drug tested. She’s running in four cities now.
We invested in Glass Half Full — for that we formed an SPV (single purpose vehicle when investors pool their money) — and were in the major investor category, and also in Pet Krewe, which I think is going to be one of our big success stories.
Success Stories We haven’t had any exits yet, but we’re still young. I was thinking three to five years, but it’s typically longer than that to see a return on these types of investments. It’s not for the faint of heart.
How to Reach Them FlamingoFunders.net
New Orleans Startup Fund
in the words of Jimmy Roussel, president and CEO
Background The New Orleans Startup Fund was originally launched by a group of business executives looking to help diversify the New Orleans economy. The idea behind the fund is to serve as a very early investor in a lot of nascent businesses and try to de-risk the deals for follow-on investors — so both bring capital to market and also serve as the riskiest capital in the ecosystem.
How They Operate The Startup Fund is a 501 c3 evergreen fund, which means 100% of the money that comes back in the form of returns, we reinvest all that money. The operating expenses to pay my salary and the staff salary are charitable donations to the 501 c3, so we have donations from our board members, foundations, grants from the federal government, the EDA.
We call it a fund, but we're really investing under a program called SSBCI (State Small Business Credit Initiative). We're probably the largest and oldest SSBCI funder in the state. The organization has a staff of three, an all-volunteer board of about eight people, and an all-volunteer investment committee, which are entrepreneurs from a variety of different expertise who help us set the deals that we look at.
How Much They’ve Funded We typically are the first check in probably well over half the deals that we do. We're writing checks somewhere between $25,000 and $75,000 per initial check and we will invest up to $150,000 into any one company in follow-on rounds. Typically, the initial round sizes are somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000. By acting as the first check, we kind of act as a seal of approval.
We’re also structuring the deals. We're helping the young entrepreneurs in other ways, including maybe setting their corporate foundation — whether it's an LLC or Delaware C Corp — for terms of the initial investment, along with the cap table, the corporate governance, all that kind of stuff.
Investment History Under SSBCI1 we invested $2 million but we recycled that money up until we made investments with about $3.5 million because we had some exits that came back.
Under SSBCI2, which started last year, we've invested an additional $1 million, and we hope to invest another $4.5 or $5 million on top of that.
We invested in just north of 85 companies over that 12-year period, including somewhere over around 100 to 110 rounds of financing. With some companies we will follow-on invest in subsequent rounds. We’ve had 10 exits, including one big exit in a company called Levelset a few years ago. We were the first check in Levelset.
Of the 85 copanies, we've had maybe 30 to 35 of those companies go out of business. We have 10 or 15 that, in investment parlance, are called zombies, which means they're paying their own bills but they're not growing tremendously big, and it's going to be hard for us to get our money out. And then the remainder are just typical growth companies that are underway and we're along for the ride at this point. Most all our companies are in Southeast Louisiana. We have one or two deals in Shreveport and a couple in Baton Rouge.
What They’re Looking For First and foremost, the biggest attraction is the person or people. Sometimes we'll even invest in a young, promising entrepreneur where we may think the idea is kind of iffy, but we want to give them the experience of going out and starting a company and we think that we can help.
We invest across all different types of industries; We have technology companies, life science companies, food companies, oil and gas, etc. What we don't do is traditional, “sin related” businesses like bars and restaurants, casinos. We also don't do “hit driven” businesses, like movies, albums, video games.
We also look for high growth companies. If you want to start a barber shop on Magazine Street, for example, that's great, but that's not for us right now. If you said, ‘I want to have 500 barber shops across the Southeast,’ that would be interesting to us.
I’m proud that we have pretty decent diversity metrics — about 50% of who we’ve funded are entrepreneurs of color, and about 35% to 40% are women.
Success Stories Levelset was a big one, but we have been in a lot of other big deals around town. We have a company right now called Quarrio, which is in the AI space, and they're out raising money right now. Our companies have gone on to raise somewhere north of $250 million in venture capital collectively.
How To Reach Them NewOrleansStartupFund.org
Gulf South Angel Network
in the words of Mike Eckert, board chair
Background I started the group in April 2014 as the NOLA Angel Network. I had led angel groups in other parts of the country and had been involved in angel investing since the late 1990s. At that time, I was still on the board of directors of the National Angel Capital Organization. Ironically, one of the things I did was help angel groups get started…At the end of 2014, we had 80 members, and it grew from there. About a year ago, we rebranded to Gulf South Angel Network. Today, we have 140 members, which puts us in the top 15% of the approximately 400 angel groups in America in terms of size.
How They Operate We have a terrific board of directors. We’re all volunteers, with the exception of two part-time people.
We have two funds, and we quickly found that with a group that large, we needed to look at investment opportunities beyond Southeast Louisiana because there just wasn't enough for us. We invest nationally, and amazingly we get presented with an investment opportunity every day.
We run companies through a very intense vetting process and then our members decide if they want to invest.
How Much They’ve Invested Last year, we invested about $5 million in 19 companies. We are in the top 5% in America in capital invested. We shouldn't be in New Orleans, we should be in a top 10 or top 15 market, but here we are.
Since our launch, we’ve invested in about 60 companies in 18 states… I think we've invested in a dozen companies in Louisiana, almost all of which are in New Orleans…We have members in 12 states… Some of our members write $100,000 checks, some write $50,000 checks, many write $10,000 checks…Between our two funds we've invested over $25 million. We're the largest angel group between Houston and Atlanta, and maybe between Houston and the Atlantic.
We've also had exits or liquidity events where our members are making money, which is thrilling. We have a regular member education program where we provide education on becoming a better and wiser investor and about different trends. We've got one coming up on AI.
Investment History We are agnostic in terms of companies in which we invest. We've invested in a drug being developed to address a rare form of cancer in children, and we've invested in the next generation six pack holder, a pet costuming company and everything in between.
What They’re Looking For First, the management. We want to get a real feel for the team, the culture, the board, the investors, the advisors, the culture.
Many of the managers and CEOs of these companies are very inexperienced. They're very smart, very bright, they come up with good ideas, but they don't have a lot of experience in operating and building a company. So, we want to see who they've surrounded themselves with, or sometimes we, if we invest, we want to become involved as advisors or board members or board observers to help them. Second thing we look at is the market, the market opportunity, the size, the trends, the competition, the company's competitive advantage, the pricing, the partnerships and such.
We look at the company's product. Does it have a competitive advantage? If it's a manufactured product, where is it being manufactured? What are the supply chains? Are there tariff issues? If it's a technology company or software company, what kind of patents and IP do they have that would protect it? Of course, we study the financial model and the credibility of that.
Success Stories We haven't had any returns from New Orleans companies yet. There's one that we’re really high on, that's Obatala Sciences. And there's Pet Krewe, and Tray Away which are both going to be real winners.
But our biggest success is an exciting one. In 2022, we got a call from Mississippi Economic Development about two entrepreneurs out of Purdue in West Lafayette, Indiana, who had invented a solid rocket fuel and were going to come down to Mississippi, near Stennis, and develop rocket motors with their fuel, which makes rockets go farther and faster.
We decided to invest in the company (Adranos) so we put the deal together in about three weeks.
In early 2023, the CEO called me up and told me they were going to be acquired by a company called Anduril for $200 million. We had put $750,000 in it, so it was going to be a great return, which we ended up getting 50/50 in cash and stock. Today, the market cap for Anduril is $20 billion. Now we're sitting here holding stock in a company that likely will go public for about $50 billion.
How to Reach Them GulfSouthAngels.org
Callais Capital Management
in the words of Harold “Hal” Callais II, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer
Background I came up with the idea for Callais Capital 10 years ago. I live in Thibodaux, but I’m originally from Galliano. I was born into an entrepreneurial family; we’re four generations of entrepreneurs. My grandfather co-founded or founded a number of companies….including four different commercial banks. So taking deposits, making loans, that's really where I cut my teeth.
I ended up being offered job opportunities, but I didn’t want to move. I wanted to carve a name for myself and that's where I came up with Callais Capital. I brought my brother and my dad in with me and over time, we've found our niche.
I became very quickly convinced that Louisiana's long-term success is going to be rooted in its ability to uplift its next generation of entrepreneurs; it has to be from building and investing in the community, so that’s what we do.
How They Operate Between Callais Capital, its subsidiaries, its related parties, its affiliates and other things, we're probably hovering around eight or nine people, full-time and part-time, across Louisiana. I have three or four people that operate on the deal side and I run strategy, direct the team, portfolio operations, that kind of stuff.
How Much They’ve Funded We've invested over $300 million in more than 80 companies.
What They’re Looking For We don't like to invest in an industry or a sector, we like to invest in the trends that are shaping that industry or sector.
We have about 10 different themes we’re looking at right now, but energy is a big one. We've been involved with the LSU FUEL program since the beginning. I'm on the governance board, and I've been co-chair of the technology commercialization committee. Gov. Landry also appointed me to be on the Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry last year, so I'm getting a lot of new, interesting perspectives on the industrial side of the economy here.
Historically, we have played mostly in seed Series A and Series B and Series C. Now we're less stage focused and more thematically focused. We’re more interested in finding the right opportunity that fits our thesis in that market… Where we found our niche is partnering with investors from out of the state where we can be the local partner. We've got a good reputation. People know us in the market
Success Stories The first startup in New Orleans that I backed that had an exit was in Enriched Schools, a marketplace for charter school teachers. They scaled up quick and had a quick exit after a few years. We also got involved with PosiGen a number of years ago. They've gotten to be pretty substantial… Something Borrowed Blooms is coming off of their best year ever, and then I have Mallard Bay. I love them. I'm also an angel investor in Fly Guys. ProKeep and Nest Health — they're on a great tear right now. And Docpace, they're up 100-plus-percent, year-over-year.
How to Reach Them The best way to get our attention is to have a friendly referral. We get thousands of pitches a year, maybe 100 every week, including through our website (
CallaisCapital.com). But in our experience the best deals have come from trusted referrals.
