Courtesy Photo
LANSING — A group of Lansing-area investors wants to provide seed capital to one new company annually that’s just getting off the ground.
The dozen partners in Altruis Capital LLC each put a few thousand dollars into the capital fund. They’re now scouting for a startup company that can use seed funding of $20,000 to $30,000 to get started on commercializing an innovation.
Altruis Capital will seek investment prospects from across the state with a focus on the Lansing area, said Tom Stewart, a founding member and managing partner at Common Wealth Enterprises LLC in Lansing.
Partners in the fund don’t have enough to invest individually or to become involved in an angel investment group, so they opted to pool their money in Altruis to support entrepreneurism, Stewart said.
The fund will make a “super early-stage investment to help some of these companies to essentially have experiments,” such as conducting a market analysis to validate an idea or doing beta testing, Stewart said. He cites a need where startups may secure some funding through a local business plan competition, then “falter…