Who Needs Silicon Valley?
Ever since the economy started slowing last year, business owners have been complaining about a lack of access to capital. Not Elizabeth Donley. The CEO of Stemina Biomarker Discovery and her co-founder, Gabriela Cezar, raised $1.5 million from angel investors in six months after entering their Madison, Wisconsin — based stem-cell-research company in a business plan competition in May 2007. The event was put on by the Wisconsin Angel Network, a state-financed group that has been encouraging angel activity by educating wealthy individuals about how to make early-stage investments. “Wisconsin tends to be a conservative state, and risk taking is not considered an admirable trait,” says Lorrie Keating Heinemann, chairperson of the Wisconsin Angel Network, or WAN. Recently, however, that has started to change in Wisconsin’s business community, owing partly to WAN’s efforts. Within two years of its launch, angel investing in the state more than doubled, from $67 million in 2005 to $146 mill
