IllinoisVENTURES featured in The Daily Illini

IllinoisVENTURES is a capital firm devoted to assissting entrepreneurs, including faculty, students and alumni from the three campuses of the University of Illinois System. In its March 28, 2019 issue, The Daily Illini elaborates on how IllinoisVENTURES helps students get closer to achieving their entrepreneurial dreams.

Tom Parkinson, Senior Director of IllinoisVENTURES and Daniel Gambrell, an Associate of IllinoisVENTURES share their views on what they look for in a start-up while investing. “Some of those key factors are: a great idea, a large and growing market opportunity and at least the beginnings of a strong management team,” Parkinson said.

The article also talks about IllinoisVENTURES’ recent $100,000 investment in EarthSense, an agriculture technology startup launched by Univeristy of Illinois alumnus, Chinmay Soman. Soman talks about the benefits of having IllinoisVENTURES as an investor in his startup. He emphasizes the fact that they have a mentoring relationship and instead of just merely investing money, IllinoisVENTURES helps EarthSense in a lot of other ways like by providing relevant connections and market advice.

The Champaign office of IllinoisVENTURES and EarthSense headquarters are both located in EnterpriseWorks, which makes communication a very easy affair. EnterpriseWorks helps IllinoisVENTURES by filtering out relevant startups for investment.

Read the full article here.