This week we’re taking a look at the investment landscape in Iowa and as part of that series, we’ll be sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have closed a round of funding in the last year.
We hope these profiles give insight into how a community of entrepreneurs has pursued different avenues to make their businesses a reality.
Since he started trying to raise capital, Higher Learning Technologies co-founder Alec Whitters has found there are three types of investors.
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“We have a group of them on the field playing with us, helping us to strategize and being really deeply involved in what we’re doing.
“Then there’s a group of people, probably the biggest group, who we do dinners, golf outings or tailgates with each week. They come to cheer us on and act as supporters but aren’t as actively engaged with us day-to-day.
“The third camp of people support us and cheer us on, but are fairly passive overall.”
From his experience, Whitters has found it takes all three to help make a startup successful. And for the Coralville, Iowa-based startup, finding them has meant becoming highly visible in the entrepreneurial community.
Early on in HLT’s growth, its co-founders got their company off the ground by participating in pitch contests and business model competitions around the state.
“We just put ourselves out there and through that we were able to form some relationships with people in the area who could give us advice and perspective on what we were doing,” he said.
From there, Whitters says the relationships continued to spiral outward and develop into something bigger. “The key is really to be out there meeting people and form genuine relationships with them and good things start happening.”
In early February, Higher Learning Technologies closed a $1 million seed round. Among the round’s notable investors are former ACT CEO Richard Ferguson, Involta founder and CEO Bruce Lehrman and Josh Cramer of Iowa City, Iowa-based dev firm FullStack.
“I met with the young men behind the company and was impressed by their energy level and ability to put forward some really great ideas,” Ferguson told SPN in February. “From my perspective, I happen to believe that I could be very helpful to them having been in that industry and in that area with ACT for a very, very long time.
“They’ve been hugely receptive to the advice that I’ve had to offer so far.”
For HLT it’s been the relationships early relationships with investors like Ferguson that have helped grow the company over the past year.
“My advice would be not to go out being desperate and begging for money,” Whitters said. “It’s better to go out and build genuine relationships and get genuine advice and perspective from people who have been there and done that.”
