Among home run investments, according to Mr. Austin, North Bay Angels put money into TriVascular, which started in 1998 and makes products for endovascular aortic heart repair. This year the company expects revenue of more than $32 million.
AspenAir, which makes energy-efficient air filters, was another investment by North Bay Angels, AspenAir’s chairman Brad Baker is also CEO and chairman of Codding, which developed Sonoma Mountain Village.
NonProfitEasy, a company that makes software to help manage any nonprofit, was founded about three years ago by Lomesh Shah, and is an investment for Lindsay Austin, chairman of SoCo Nexus and a North Bay Angels member.
“AspenAir and NonProfitEasy both came out of the SoCo Nexus incubator,” he said. “Those are some of the companies that are getting funded and are growing. They’re doing very well. There’s a high probability for an exit. We’ll eventually get our money back. That’s the whole idea.”
His background at United Way helped him steer NonProfitEasy, where he sits on the board. “There were so many nonprofits that did not have much in the way of an enterprise system,” he said. The service, which includes an interface to bookkeeping and fund-raising units, is based in the cloud and costs $50 a month as a subscription.
What he found compelling as an investor in NonProfitEasy was that a few local nonprofits were raving about early versions of the software, which is written by a team in India. “That market is several billion dollars,” Mr. Austin said, with about a thousand nonprofits located in Sonoma County. Other North Bay Angels members joined in through two investing rounds plus a small debt financing, totaling about $1 million. There are about 10 shareholders.
The company has nearly 1,000 customers, is adding about 50 customers a month, has signed a strategic partnership agreement with a large direct mailing company, and has revenue of more than $500,000. “This is recurring revenue,” he said, with $600 a year per customer.
