Confluence Capital, the groundbreaking MSP venture capital (VC) fund, is now
Matchstick Ventures. The rebrand comes amid a flurry of other changes announced early last month, notably the addition of several high-profile investors and advisors.
New investors, according to
Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, include Seth Levine, managing director at Boulder-based Foundry Group, a venture capital fund; Lisa Crump, co-founder of Eden Prairie-based
digifab giant Stratasys; Scott Burns, CEO of St. Paul-based GovDelivery, a software communication platform that serves government organizations; and Darren Cotter, founder of St. Paul-based online rewards company InboxDollars. Advisors include Levine and Joy Lindsay, principal at Minneapolis-based StarTec Investments.
But why “Matchstick”?
“The ‘Matchstick’ name rings truer to the entrepreneurs and startups that we exist to serve,” says founder and managing director Ryan Broshar, who also founded
beta.mn and
Twin Cities Startup Week. “Our goal is to act as a catalyst — not just for the companies we invest in, but for MSP’s startup economy as a whole.”
To date, Matchstick/Confluence has invested in 14 early-stage companies. Though most are headquartered in the MSP area, there are a few outliers: Denver, Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis, and Lincoln, Nebraska. Far from diluting Matchstick’s local potency, Broshar sees these wayward investments as central to the fund’s mission: “evangelizing” MSP’s emerging tech ecosystem.
“We talk up the region every time we interact with out-of-market clients and prospects,” says Broshar, adding that his company gets at least one inquiry from outside entrepreneurs or VC funds who’ve heard about Matchstick and are excited about what’s happening in MSP. “Interest in the Twin Cities is definitely gaining momentum.”
“The writing is on the wall for MSP’s startup scene and capital ecosystem,” he adds.
Broshar should know what an up-and-coming tech hub looks like. He lived in the Denver-Boulder area in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when the Front Range’s tech economy was blowing up. Broshar threw himself into the local scene, parlaying a pending MBA at UC-Boulder into a gig as a consulting firm principal. He networked with and advised ambitious Front Range entrepreneurs for a few years, then turned his focus to finding and investing in early-stage companies through partnerships with the Foundry Group and other local VCs.
When he moved back to MSP in fall 2012, Broshar found the same entrepreneurial energy he’d grown accustomed to in Denver-Boulder. But with few notable VC firms and a relatively conservative commercial financing ecosystem that eschewed risk, many local startups had to look elsewhere for capital.
“We’re blessed with a lot of gritty entrepreneurs who just go to work and get stuff done, rather than talking about what they have yet to do,” says Broshar. “But even the most talented and ambitious entrepreneurs can’t survive without capital,” along with the mentoring and peer support services provided by organizations and initiatives like Broshar’s beta.mn and Twin Cities Startup Week.
“The goal was, and still is, to put MSP on the map,” he says.