My good friend Melissa Lipani has started her own full service pet care business, Woof! SLC, where she offers services ranging from Walks, Pet Sitting, Pet Taxi, Bathing, Yard Cleanup, etc. within the Sugarhouse (and surrounding 5 miles) area.

Melissa has three pit bulls of her own, one of which she has nurtured back to good health from his battle with an auto-immune disease.  She contributes numerous hours of volunteer work with No More Homeless Pets and Best Friends, being a constant representative for animal rights and adoptions.  I highly recommend her for your beloved pet’s needs.

For further information, visit her site and blog or call her at 801-419-2464.

Back in 2007 I created a list of private equity investors in Utah.  Over the past couple years this list has shifted, making an updated list necessary.

Angels

Angel investors provide the initial capital to a start-up, investing amounts usually up to $1m in exchange for common stock.

• Olympus Angels
  
• Utah Angels
• Top of Utah Angels / Grow Utah
  
• Salt Lake Life Science Angels
• Park City Angels
• Southern Utah Dixie Angels
• Kickstart

Venture Capital

Venture capitalists provide early-stage and growth capital, typically investing in industries such as information technology, clean technology, and life sciences.

• EPIC Ventures
• vSpring Capital
  
• UV Partners
  
• Canopy Ventures
• Peterson Ventures
• Prospector Equity Capital
• Double Eagle Ventures (Gary Kennedy)
  
• EsNet Group
• University Venture Fund
  
• Peer Ventures
• Vast Equity

Private Equity

The term private equity can be used for any investor that invests in non-public companies, but usually is in reference to investors that focus on non-public companies with revenues.  Below are the late stage and buy-out firms in Utah. The late stage firms finance companies that are already cash flow positive and need financing for expansion or an additional round before a liquidation. The buy-out firms actually buy a company, finding a new management team (or personally managing the company themselves) to turn the business towards profitability.

• Sorenson Capital
• Peterson Partners
• Cross Creek Capital
  
• DW Healthcare Partners
• Banyan Ventures
• Dolphin Capital
• Mercato
• Leucadia
• Huntsman Gay Global Capital

Venture Lenders

Venture lenders provide a financing option that extends the capital between equity rounds. It is a debt plus warrant structure, preserving the equity of the company but providing potential upside for the lender.

• UTFC / Innovations Venture
  
• Zions Bank Venture Lending

Am I missing any investors?  If so, please comment or email me.

The University Venture Fund is a student ran venture capital firm that has raised $18m from outside limited partners and has a current portfolio of 17 investments.  The organization has partnered with numerous private equity partners, providing free due diligence in return for the real life due diligence experience.  In return, the private equity firms often carve out an investment piece, allowing UVF to piggyback if interested.  All investments are decided by the students, but must be approved by their investment committee, compromised of local private equity investors.

My volunteer work with UVF consists of document review, ensuring that all research points are considered during the due diligence process, and providing additional insight into the role of a VC analyst.

If you are a student at the University of Utah, BYU, or Utah State University, and are interested in venture capital (no matter your field of study) I would urge you to get involved with this organization.

To be honest, it ended up being a weird volunteer experience for personal reasons irrelevant to this blog.  However, I still wanted to briefly highlight KCPW as I truly enjoy their news coverage, have volunteered with them numerous times, and donated many times in the past.

KCPW, acquired by Wasatch Media last year, is a public radio station serving the Salt Lake Metropolitan and is supported mainly by donations.  They provide an excellent line-up of programs, with my top favorites being the BBC, Morning Edition, and (of course) Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. =)  

They have a website, handful of blogs, twitter presence, and radio coverage at the frequencies of 88.3 and 105.3.  If interested in volunteering, fill out this form and they will get in touch with upcoming activities.

This Week’s Service

This week I worked with the organization No More Homeless Pets in Utah, this being my first time to volunteer with this group.  No More Homeless Pets in Utah’s  mission is to end the euthanasia of dogs and cats in Utah and to promote humane alternatives for feral cats. They have a no kill policy, sheltering the animals until adoption. I was introduced to the group by my friend Melissa, a strong advocate for animal rights who regularly helps out NMHPU and has fostered pets.

Each week No More Homeless Pets brings the animals to either the West Valley or Taylorsville PetSmart (PetSmart has partnered with NMHPU) to try and find them a home with a shopper.  NMHPU showcases their pets for the whole day, therefore needing volunteers to help walk and play with them.  I showed up at 10:30am and stayed until 1:30pm, walking and playing with each animal as my friend and other volunteers (who had worked with this non-profit previously) spoke with customers about the pets.  It was yet another fabulous volunteer experience.

Hanging out with my friend Melissa and Sparky, one of the dogs up for adoption.  Sparky is a 9-month-old pit bull and a fabulous dog.  He is completely mellow, a snuggler and great with other animals.

Interested in Helping?

There are many ways to help No More Homeless Pets in Utah.

1. Adopt a Pet – The animals in this program are excellent animals, many of which have been pulled off of euthanasia lists due to their high likelihood for adoption.  Adopting a pet through this program saves an animal from unnecessary euthanasia and gives another animal a second chance.  You can view the available animals on Petfinder.  Petfinder and the NMHPU also list which PetSmart the animals will be at that week so that you can meet and play with them in person.
2. Volunteer – No More Homeless Pets is always in need of volunteers and lists their current needs on their site.
3. Foster a Pet – With the no kill policy, No More Homeless Pets is often in need of additional temporary homes for dogs.  Fostering a pet opens up more room for NMHPU to bring on additional animals. If interested in fostering a pet, visit this link.
4. Donate to the Cause – Like many organizations, donations are needed to keep the organization going.  The organization gladly accepts non-monetary donations such as toys, pet food, leashes and cleaning supplies.
5. Vote for NMHPU to Receive A Grant – Rescue Site gives out grants to shelters. You can vote for No More Homeless Pets in Utah, using these instructions.

Staying Informed

If you want to stay up to date with the progress of NMHPU, you can read about their current events on their site, subscribe to their newsletter, or follow them on Twitter.

Numerous posts and tweets have been hitting the Utah scene lately concerning Phil Burn’s daughter, Serenity, being diagnosed with Leukemia. I blogged a couple days ago about the new Chip In Widget, created by Jesse Stay, that thankfully has been distributed amongst a handful of bloggers and is seeing a good up-tick in donations.

However, there is another way to help out.

I truly try to volunteer on a weekly basis (often posting about my experiences on the Cragbaby here, here and here), with my very favorite volunteer activity being donating platelets at ARUP. I have been donating platelets since last summer, trying to give every other week, health permitting. I find it to be the easiest form of service because by sitting and watching a movie (albeit with a needle in my arm) I can directly impact a life.

I choose to donate at ARUP because all donations are used at the local hospitals, helping cancer, transplant and traumatic injury patients. Platelets only have a shelf life of a five days resulting in a continual need. To date I have only been at the ARUP lab on one occasion where I was told they were finally catching up with demand, though they expected to be behind within the next couple days.

The UtahBlood site shows where units of blood are being used. (I am not quite sure if this includes platelet distribution.)

If interested in the Serenity cause or are looking for a fantastic volunteer activity, consider platelet donation. An appointment with ARUP can be made by calling 801-524-5272.

I have gotten to know Phil through a handful of his startups and by following his online presence. He is a good guy willing to take the continual risk of being an entrepreneur in order to provide innovation to many. I would urge you to help him out in this time of need.

This last addition is the only one that stumps me as these Google Ads (of course) point to competitive sites. I have heard that the markup on retail items can often dance to the 100% line, whereas ads bring in variable prices due to the site’s traffic. I would think that it would be more profitable to swap the web real estate of their comparison ads with the google ads, unless of course Steep And Cheap receives enough traffic and click throughs to outweigh their discounted inventory markup.

Google Adsense on the top right corner of the landing page.

Comparative Backcountry ads are seen when scrolled to the next page.

According to Alexa and Compete, the site sees approximate traffic of about 110k users per month creating visits totaling just over 1m, indicating that the same people are repeatedly visiting the site. (Please note that traffic numbers are extremely hard to quantify through the counting of IP Address visits.)

I mentioned my confusion to a friend who would be familiar with the details of the site. He told me some interesting facts and tidbits, but didn’t know the revenue comparison of the two ad types. I hear the advertising model pitched on a frequent basis but time and again see that it brings in substantial less revenues than expected, with many companies changing or augmenting their revenue model. If any of you readers have a better understanding of clickthroughs, revenue benchmarks that correlate to traffic (if such a thing actually exists, which I doubt), etc. I would be interested in chatting with you. I realize that the revenues will vary by site and the level of how targeted the ads are that are being used, but would welcome any comments or feedback.

Angels: There are four organized angel groups and a couple of individuals within Salt Lake and Provo. I have listed the organizations only as I believe the individuals seek out their own deal flow. The angels will often invest at the earliest stage of the business, even as early as conception. Certain venture players will also invest at the seed stage (including Wasatch) but this stage is the angel’s main focus.

• Olympus Angels
• Utah Angels
• Top of Utah Angels / Grow Utah
  
• Salt Lake Life Science Angels

Local Venture Capital Firms: Venture capitalists provide early-stage and growth capital. Due to the venture capital model, VC’s usually only invest in high-technology deals able to generate high margins.

• Wasatch Venture Fund
• vSpring Capital
• UV Partners
• Canopy Ventures
• Prospector Equity Capital
• Double Eagle Ventures
• EsNet
• University Venture Fund
• Vast Equity (in the formation process)
• Another one is being formed, but due to the fact that I am unsure on their public status I will not post the name on my blog.

Local Private Equity Firms: I have lumped the later stage firms and buyout firms together in the Private Equity list since there are only a handful of these investors in Utah. The later stage firms finance companies that are already cash flow positive and need financing for expansion or in preparation for a liquidation. The buy-out firms actually buy a company and find a new management team (or personally manage the company) to turn the business towards profitability.

• Sorenson Capital
• Peterson Partners
• Cross Creek Capital
• DW Healthcare Partners
• Banyan Ventures
• Two other spin-outs are being formed, but once again I don’t know their public status.

Venture Lending: Venture lenders are a financing option that extends the capital between equity rounds. It is debt plus warrant structure, preserving the equity of the company but providing potential upside for the lender. UTFC was the only venture lender until a couple months ago when Zions created a venture lending arm.

• UTFC
• Zions Bank Venture Lending