the Manager of each fund, TechColumbus serves as the Managing Member of each fund and provides key administrative and entrepreneur support. The Ohio Third Frontier Program co-invests in the funds, and OTAF also has a strong network of collaborators and partners.

OTAF’s mission is to “Turn great ideas into prized companies to build entrepreneurial wealth”. To-date, OTAF and its sidecars have invested $28 MM in 44 companies that have raised $355 MM from other sources. Four companies have achieved positive exits and 10 companies were complete losses. The 30 active companies currently employ 421 people with average salaries of $87,275, and are generating about $50 MM in annual revenues.

The typical OTAF investee is in the late “Seed”, “Start-up” or “Early” lifecycle stages – depending on the industry. We prefer software companies to have demonstrated commercial feasibility by revenue generation. To qualify for investment consideration from OTAF, the company must be (or plan to be) the following:

1) Based in Ohio (any region)

2) Organized as a C-Corp legal entity, incorporated in Delaware or Ohio

3) Part of one of these subsectors: IT, Life Sciences, or Advanced Materials

How are OTAF investments structured?

OTAF IV will make 14 initial investments of $325,000, and seven of these companies will receive follow-on investments of $175,000. Individual OTAF members who are interested in increasing their exposure may write checks and invest alongside the fund as “sidecars”. Our typical round size is $750,000 to $2.5 MM, and if this is more than OTAF and sidecars will fund directly, then we will formulate a syndication strategy to socialize the company with our investment partners around Ohio and the Midwest.

OTAF uses a standard term sheet and deal documents based on the NCVA model term sheet for participating convertible preferred equity.