Monday, January 30, 2012

Seed-stage investor Experiment Fund launches in Cambridge

By Michelle Lang

Student entrepreneurs in Cambridge may have reason to stick around the area with the launching of The Experiment Fund, a new seed stage investment fund focused on student startups and new technologies and platforms in Cambridge. The main focus of these startups are in the areas of information, healthcare and energy technologies.

Launched Friday, the fund is backed by New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm with U.S. offices in California, Maryland and New York, and additional support by angel investors and advisors is expected in the future, according to a news release from The Experiment Fund. The fund will back several startups in the next two years with financing up to $250,000 per venture, initially with Harvard University students, though operating independently of Harvard itself. Eventually, the fund will branch out to back startups along the East Coast.

Venture capitalist Patrick Chung and entrepreneurs David Edwards and Hugo Van Vuuren developed the idea for a resource focused on developing local innovation ideas.

Among the resources available to local entrepreneurs as part of The Experiment Fund are financial resources, advisors from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-Lab).