North Coast Angel Fund back in fundraising mode

Early stage investment group North Coast Angel Fund is raising money for a second fund, having made an initial closing of $800,000, according to a regulatory document.

Considering the group’s first fund totaled $5.6 million, it’s a near certainty that the $800,000 represents just a fraction of the amount that North Coast Angels hopes to raise.

In all likelihood, North Coast Angels is looking to raise $8 million for the group’s second fund. The group received a $2 million Third Frontier grant earlier this year and has applied for another (pdf) $2 million grant from the state-sponsored technology jobs initiative. Each grant requires a one-for-one dollar match, so that’s how we arrived at the $8 million figure.

Todd Federman, executive director of the fund, politely declined comment. Along with Federman, Clay Rankin, the fund’s managing member, directs most of the fund’s activities.

Billing itself as Northeast Ohio’s first professionally manged angel fund, North Coast invests in companies in industries including bioscience, information technology, electronics and energy. The fund typically invests $200,000 in each company. Members then often chip in a few hundred thousand dollars of their own cash in “sidecar” investments.

North Coast has 21 portfolio companies, including Cincinnati-based personalized medicine company AssureRx Health Inc., Cleveland-based drug developer TheraVasc Inc., and Columbus-based heart diagnostics company CardiOx Corp.

A number of North Coast Angels portfolio companies have attracted additional capital from other investors, as well. TheraVasc, for example, recently raised $1.8 million to fund clinical trials of its drug to treat peripheral artery disease. The fundraise included contributions from JumpStart Inc. and Portal Capital.