By JOAN D. LaGUARDIA, The News-Press
Investors from throughout the United States are now contributing to a venture capital fund that will have up to $20 million available for five to 10 business deals annually, preferably for companies willing to relocate to Southwest Florida.
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| STELLAR GROUP: Clockwise from front: Richard Schmidt, Karl Fry and Ben Maltese of Stellar Business Partners; and Jerry Steiner, Mark Shepherd, and Aaron Shepherd of dotCool, have partnered to form a new company called Stellar Business Builders in Bonita Springs. |
The fund, which will close to new investors in November, is managed by Stellar Venture Partners, a North Naples-based firm founded by Richard Schmidt, well-known locally as the author of the Stellar Stock Report Newsletter.
“Florida businesses account for only 2 percent of national venture capital funds,” Schmidt said. “Southwest Florida is ripe for becoming such a high tech business center. Our goal is to recruit, support and grow high tech companies in this area, taking Southwest Florida into the 21st century.”
To encourage the businesses in which Stellar invests to relocate to Southwest Florida, Stellar Venture Partners has formed a separate partnership with Bonita Springs-based dot.Cool.
That partnership, Stellar Business Partners, will operate a business incubator in which the emerging companies can share space and other resources.
Dot.Cool, which operates in the business incubator space at the Bernwood Centre on U.S. 41, helps other businesses with Internet marketing strategies.
“Instead of spending effort counting money, we want to be in the business of building businesses,” Schmidt said. The incubator not only helps businesses reduce overhead costs, “It adds value for our investors in terms of control,” he said.
Schmidt said there will be no shortage of companies in which to invest.
“We are currently reading one or two business plans a day, mostly of a high tech nature,” he said.
Most of Schmidt’s investors come from subscribers to his newsletters or clients who invested with him in the past, although he also plans to work with other venture capital firms and financial institutions.
Schmidt started his business career in startup, turnaround and mergers for large companies and for his own entrepreneurial enterprises. He retired to Naples in 1990 after a 21-year career and eventually formed his own money management business, Stellar Asset Management. He sold that company in 1995, and now publishes a newsletter.
“Stellar Venture Partners is a natural progression,” Schmidt said.
— Joan D. LaGuardia can be reached at jlaguardia@news-press.com or 335-0364.