Investment criteria
What we back, and how you get an answer.
We back Georgia founders building companies that create durable value here: through innovation, through quality jobs, through ownership that stays local, or through becoming a company this state cannot afford to lose.
Do you fit
Four questions, and you will know.
Answer no to any of these and an application is unlikely to go anywhere.
The business is in Georgia, or is coming here
Headquartered here, employing most of its people here, or committed to doing so. We will ask you what that looks like for your business.
It is a for-profit company
Any legal form. We do not make grants and we do not fund charities.
There is something to look at
Customers, users, a product in the field, a signed pilot, research on its way out of a lab. Something beyond the idea.
You are willing to report numbers
Companies we invest in send us figures on a schedule. If that is not something you want to do, this is the wrong money.
- We do not require an introduction. One form, and every one is read.
- We are not the only money a company will need, and we say so early.
- Meeting all four gates is not a yes. It means the application gets read properly.
What we invest in
Five kinds of Georgia business.
A software company and a fourteen-van plumbing business are both here, and they are judged by different things.
Venture and innovation
Software, AI, fintech, health technology, life sciences, university spinouts.
Industrial and hard tech
Advanced manufacturing, hardware, robotics, materials, devices, supply chain and industrial technology.
Consumer and products
Brands, food, physical products, and businesses that make or move things in Georgia.
Local growth and essential businesses
Services, healthcare, skilled trades and multi-location businesses that can add durable jobs and keep their ownership local.
Strategic Georgia opportunities
Agricultural technology, logistics, mobility, energy, defense, rural health, and anything else built on a strength this state already has.
a typical first check, set against a milestone the company can reach
across the life of a company, once follow-on has been earned
A range, and set company by company. Smaller checks are written for commercialization work. A ceiling rather than a plan. Most companies will not reach it.
What we look for
Eight things, weighed differently.
No two of these count the same, and what counts most changes with the kind of business. They are not ranked.
- Founder strength
- Integrity, commitment, real knowledge of the field, and a willingness to hire people better than you.
- A real customer need
- Evidence that somebody with a budget cares about the problem.
- A clear use of the money
- What this check unlocks, and what will be measurably different in twelve to eighteen months.
- Economics that hold up
- A credible path to cash flow, to the next investor, or to both, depending on the business.
- Something that compounds with work
- Technology, know-how, distribution, brand, an operating system, intellectual property. An advantage that gets stronger as you run.
- Value that lands in Georgia
- Quality jobs, research turned into product, local ownership, supply chain depth, talent that stays.
- Capital that is additive
- We are most useful where our money and our network change what happens, or change when it happens.
- A founder who reinvests
- The people who succeed here become the next generation of Georgia investors and mentors. Some of them tell us that before they have earned it.
Statewide by design
Six territories, and Atlanta is one of them.
Atlanta will keep producing companies and talent, and it is a sixth of how we look at the state. We source, review and hold a portfolio across all six.
North Georgia
Advanced manufacturing, the automotive and battery supply chain, materials, and the businesses that grow around a plant.
Metro Atlanta
Software, fintech, health technology, logistics technology, and the companies most able to pull outside capital into the state.
Athens and Augusta
University research on its way to a market, life sciences, agricultural technology, cyber and defense.
Middle and West
Aerospace and defense, manufacturing, logistics, health, insurance technology, and services that scale across towns.
Coastal and Southeast
The ports and everything that moves through them: logistics, maritime, aerospace, manufacturing, food.
South and Southwest
Agricultural technology, food processing, rural health, light manufacturing, and the employers a county cannot afford to lose.
Working territories for sourcing and portfolio review. Each maps back to Georgia’s twelve economic development regions internally. No county is excluded and no territory carries a quota.
Capital follows evidence
Nothing moves up on schedule.
The first check buys one milestone. Everything after it is earned.
First check
Money against one milestone the company names itself, with a date on it. Enough to reach the milestone and not much more.
Follow-on
The milestone is met.
Earned rather than scheduled. It goes to the companies that showed the thing they said they would show, and it is a larger check than the first.
Outside capital
A larger investor commits.
Seed and growth investors, a bank, a strategic buyer. We stop being the biggest thing on the cap table, which is what a first check is for.
Most companies will stop at the first rung, and a company that stops there has not failed us. It is what a portfolio of first checks looks like.
How a decision gets made
Six steps, and whose move it is.
We will publish how long each step takes once we have enough live applications to promise something we can keep.
- 01
Apply
One form, one entry point for the whole state. No warm introduction required. It asks what this check would let you reach and by when, so bring that.
- 02
Fit screen
We check the basics: a Georgia business, a real company, a stage and a capital need we can meet.
- 03
Conversation
A conversation with someone who knows your industry. This is where most of the judgment happens.
- 04
Diligence
Business, team, market, numbers and legal, scaled to the company. A corner shop and a spinout do not get the same review.
- 05
Investment Committee
An independent decision on the company and on how it sits against everything else we hold.
- 06
Invest and support
Money against a milestone, and the people, customers and introductions that go with it.
Accountability
Accountability from day one.
Taking our money comes with an obligation to tell us how it is going.
A light monthly pulse. A fuller quarterly update. An annual impact return. And a call when something material happens, good or bad. We ask for business progress, capital raised, jobs, job quality and milestones.
Your figures stay yours. Anything we publish is aggregated across the portfolio, and no company’s financial or operating detail goes out without permission.
What we will publish, and whenWhere this goes
One fund now. A capital system for the state over time.
We are starting small deliberately, because the first job is to prove that a statewide model selects well.
Georgia only, every industry, every county
Larger checks, more follow-on, deeper regional reach
in cumulative Georgia Angels capital, across successive funds and vehicles
funded across Georgia over the life of the platform, directly and alongside partners
An ambition rather than money we hold, and it depends on performance, on raising each fund on its own evidence, and on conditions nobody controls. An ambition too. Every company still has to earn its check.
Get involved
Send it.
Every application is read by a person.