Josh Bartels is no stranger to the Nebraska startup ecosystem. Volunteering in the community and working for ventures such as Opendorse and Elevator over the years, he has moved up in his career to executive director of Nebraska Angels, a member-led network of angel investors in the state.

An angel investor is generally a high-net-worth individual who puts their money in very early-stage startups. In his role, Bartels said he and Nebraska Angels became interested in finding a better way to compile company updates and stay connected to the ventures in which they have invested. As more companies enter a portfolio, investors face the burden of more documents and data to sift through in order to track business trajectories and write reports.

After talking with other investors and stakeholders in the state and beyond, Bartels said he came to understand that this was a larger need and potential market to serve. This all led to the spark of what he describes as his “first true tech startup,” Gather, which he began developing last year. 

“I’ve always been building on the weekends and seeing how to innovate existing products, either within an organization or outside of just ideas that I’ve had,” Bartels said. “But this seems to be one that’s really stuck so far.”

Gather is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to integrate into typical investor tasks. It promises to pull desired info from emails, spreadsheets and other data sources, help with reminders for requesting up-to-date metrics from founders and assist with time-sensitive reporting. Targeted customers include startup investors, venture funds and family offices. 

Bartels publicly announced the launch of Gather at the end of June.

He said he was thankful for the feedback loop he has received from early adopters in the community, giving a specific shoutout to Grit Road Partners for being an initial supporter and customer. Other mentioned users include Nelnet, PGSA Venture Capital, MOVE Venture Capital and Nebraska Angels itself, along with “a number of additional funds and individual investors.”

TJ Andreasen, an associate at PGSA Venture Capital, said staying in consistent contact with portfolio companies helps both founders and investors. Through reporting and showcasing growth metrics, investors are able to encourage more financial backers to participate in their funds and maybe even raise new funds for new investments. 

On the founder side, Andreasen said consistent communication makes it so that investors are aware of where they may be able to help out, as well as be more inclined to participate in future investment rounds. If a company goes silent until requesting capital, he said, relationships with investors can be soured. 

“A lot of startups should send out some key information. You should have ARR (annual recurring revenue) in there, you should have your burn rate, you should have how much cash you have on hand, your head count,” Andreasen said. “Josh does a good way of having all this in one spot.”

The college venture fund pipeline

Andreasen said he and Bartels are friends who have overlapped professionally with local investment opportunities. He added that while they were in college, they both participated in the Maverick Venture Fund, which is the university-level venture fund out of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. 

Bartels himself noted that his experience with the group as a student and seeing entrepreneurs pitch their projects helped put him on his current path in the tech and venture capital spaces. 

He is now providing assistance to college students who have similarly found an interest in VC and investing, this time in Lincoln. Bartels said he has given the student-led venture fund out of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Husker Venture Fund, free access to Gather. 

This year, Husker Venture Fund won first place at the undergraduate global Venture Capital Investment Competition in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is a crowning achievement for the young organization, which started circa 2020-2021. 

Samuel Nelson, director of the UNL Center for Entrepreneurship, said a core reason for the Husker Venture Fund’s success comes from the willingness of community leaders to share their insights and experiences with students. 

As the Midwest faces off against the East and West Coasts’ established infrastructure and activity for startup development and funding, Nelson said easy access to mentors such as Bartels gives his students the competitive edge in understanding investing. It also forms a beacon for attracting talent to UNL. 

“The more access our students have to those groups and the information they have,” Nelson said, “the more real their learning becomes, and that’s important.”

Elizeh Tarkian is one of the new managing directors of the Husker Venture Fund and was on the team that won the global competition. A junior studying finance and economics, Tarkian said she was encouraged to join the organization by her older brother, who was a member himself and served as a student adviser to the winning team. 

Tarkian said on the logistics level, having access to Gather means Husker Venture Fund has a tool to better support the organization’s unique status as an investor. As students graduate and new faces rotate into the ranks, it can be difficult for the organization to trace decisions made by former students. Gather presents a solution for keeping timelines in check. 

Tarkian said there are limited opportunities for her and her classmates to gain hands-on experience in the world of venture capital. Getting the mentorship and specialized resources from leaders in the community provides encouragement and validation for their work.

“At the end of the day, we want to make good investments. We don’t want to be the fund that’s just playing around with money,” Tarkian said. “I think we all have a sense of responsibility. We want to see Husker Venture Fund be successful and these startups be successful.”

Future pathways

While there may be later interest in raising investments to back Gather, Bartels said the startup is currently bootstrapped. He added that he has also received financial support through the state’s prototype grant and has been working with a Nebraska-based developer. He added that he has no plan to leave the Nebraska Angels anytime soon. 

“Right now, it’s great because (Gather) is very complementary to our group,” Bartels said. “It’s a great opportunity to connect with other investors to provide them a solution to their pain points, along with connecting with those groups to help out our portfolio and companies here in the state.”

On top of looking for more potential customers for his startup, Bartels said he is in the process of getting Maverick Venture Fund at UNO similarly onboarded on the platform like Husker Venture Fund.

“I think a lot of investors, sometimes they eventually do get the itch to start something,” Andreasen said. “They see all these great founders that they get to work with all the time. You never know when you’re going to find a problem that’s worth solving.”