Driving Our Economy Forward: Angels Program
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development is hosting a series of meetings concerning the Tri-Star Angels Program.
Tonight we are learning more about what that program means for the Tennessee Valley and how the initiative is working to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem as it continues to drive our economy.
“This is to stimulate economic growth and development for the state of Tennessee. So those founders have to be in these, in these geographies.”
“Today we are in Chattanooga to do a kickoff for the TriStar Angels program or TAP what we call for short. This is a training initiative to provide training for entrepreneurs and small business owners as well as investors on Angel Investing across the state of Tennessee. The training for Angel Investing it’s one access to Capital tool. That’s part of a bigger initiative called Fund Tennessee. Fund Tennessee is $117 million of capital, over 10 years, part debt… part equity, part technical assistance. So what we’re doing here with this training, is providing training for folks to understand what is Angel Investing; why is it important for a small business owner or entrepreneur who is seeking Angel capital. And why is it important for investors to understand this asset class especially if they want to invest back in their communities into the small business owners and entrepreneurs who live in that uh in that region,” said Lamont Price, Innovation Director, Tennessee Department Economics.
“We’re not Silicon Valley and that’s okay. I think we kind of have the seeds and the behaviors that could help us realize something super special that will build our local economy.”
“We’re trying to get the word out. One of our heavy lifts is to help folks understand that this access to Capital initiative and this train training is available statewide,” said Price.
“We’re a small startup business that have been in the incubator for about 2 and 1/2 years now. And at this point we’re we’re growing fortunately. Um, but at some point you run out of economic resources and one of the reasons I wanted to come today was to learn about options and and meet different people and network,” said Curt Koontz, Signal Mountain Grill Works.
“Small business and uh entrepreneurs they are the lifeblood of a lot of our communities. They create the most net new jobs, and especially for small distress and urban communities your small business owners employ staff, they create Innovation. And they produce economic activity locally,” said Price.
“There are a lot of resources here in Chattanooga and we have a really interesting entrepreneurial ecosystem. So I think today brought a lot of resources together. It also provided a lot of education, so as a small business owner and as a startup, eventually as you grow you need more capital to continue doing that. So I learned a lot about another path that I can uh exercise on my journey,” said Stacy Martin, Owner of Horse Snacks.
“If an entrepreneur or small business owner is looking to scale or grow, this is potentially one of the access to capital tools that we would want to train them on so they can understand how it works. And so again some entrepreneurs some small business owners may be happy at a at a at a particular level of of revenue generation. But some may have grander visions of growing and we want to give them the access to Capital tools, as well as the train to help them reach that level,” said Price.
