Author: Venus Walker

First Leaf Capital Managing Partner Mark Aardsma will be returning to the #InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum in Kansas City MO, on March 28th and 29th. We’re looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and meeting promising startups from our part of the country!

First Leaf Capital portfolio company Inprentus made a big step forward this week, signing a significant contract to supply custom diffraction gratings for Spain’s ALBA synchrotron facility.

Local pastry chef Kaya Tate is taking her successful business, Hopscotch Bakery, to the next level. She’s rehab’ing a building at 802 W John St., in Champaign, IL to house her new bakery and cafe. We’re impressed by Kaya’s business results and thrilled that she chose First Leaf Capital to provide financing for this expansion.

This video describes the expansion project

SNOOZ Inventor Eli Lazar chats with Paul Wood of the News Gazette’s Wired In, a column for High Tech Difference Makers. Nice job, Eli!

After years of design work and ramping up manufacturing, First Leaf Capital portfolio company SNOOZ has released the SNOOZ White Noise Machine. It’s now available to buy retail here: SNOOZ on Amazon. The SNOOZ team has done meticulous work on thousands of tasks to bring this great product to the market. It’s already selling well. Congrats guys!

First Leaf Capital owner Mark Aardsma will be attending the #InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum in Kansas City MO, on March 28th and 29th. We’re looking forward to meeting promising startups from our part of the Country!

Ryan Shelton, CEO of portfolio company Photonicare Inc did a nice job speaking about the company’s product on a Fox News Chicago segment about startups in our state.

Here’s a link to the video.