RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Earlier today WRAL TechWire reported that Cofounders Capital had stopped some $10 million short in raising a new $50 million fund. So what’s up?

Rick Smith, WRAL TechWire’s editor and a cofounder

We caught up with founder, CEO and investor David Gardner and partner Tim McLoughlin to talk about what happened, who are the fund’s backers, and how the new money is already being used. Any news from Cofounders is big for the Triangle and North Carolina entrepreneurial eco system. Gardner and company are very active, aggressive investors.

They have heavy-hitter backers, too. (We’ve got a list.)

Lots of news here in just a few questions via an e-mail Q&A.

Here we go.

Why stop raising money

We reached our limit of 99 Limited Partners. [Minimum investment was $100,000 according to the SEC filing.] We were very strategic in the investors that we approached to invest.

We always tell entrepreneurs that raising money is not a problem, it is an opportunity to get the right people aligned with your success, so we kept fundraising to get as many folks on board as we could.

We were fortunate to have serially successful entrepreneurs, CEOs of large corporations, and successful business people from a variety of industries in the fund that will be able to help our companies.

  • What are targets for new fund in terms of investments

Very similar focus to our first fund, where we will typically be the first money into NC based B2B software companies. No company is too early for us to start talking to.

The difference with the larger fund is that we will have $1-$2M in reserve capital for our companies so that we can help attract other sources of capital and help them raise their next round quicker.

  • Who are  some of the investors?

[Most of the names on this list]  are investors in Fund II.

  • How much of new fund has already been invested?

Over $3.1M, including a brand new investment.

We have several signed term sheets and deals in the pipeline and are looking at deploying more capital soon.

The newest deals

Here are the first four investments for the new fund:

Contractor Quotes aggregates information and best practices to help inform homeowners as they research their home improvement project and search for contractors.  Homeowners no longer have to scour the internet to get inspiration for their projects or to figure out how to increase their home’s resale value the most.

CareNexis helps consumers make more informed personal care decisions with confidence. CareNexis is building disruptive, technology-based solutions designed to better engage, to better inform, and to more precisely answer health-related questions when answers are most needed.

EasyVote Solutions is a leading provider of election management software to city, county and state election offices across the United States. EasyVote Solutions provides election officials with state-of-the-art software to reduce the time it takes to perform election tasks, improve communication and accuracy between officials, election workers, and voters as well as provide data so election officials can make intelligent, informed decisions.

Ecobot builds revolutionary software that improves how we interact with the environment. Ecobot is the future of environmental monitoring, reporting and data forecasting, providing efficiency across all sectors of the environmental services industry. The first version of Ecobot provides a swifter way to input wetland field data, provides contextual vegetation and soil data lookups, and automatically generates USACE wetland delineation reports