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Semi-retired executives and part-time Longboat Key residents Sam Guren and Tom Gardner come from wildly different backgrounds.
Guren was an early investor in Apple Computer, helped bring Yoplait yogurt to the United States and has since invested in dozens of other companies. Gardner is a health care executive-turned-entrepreneur who led the team at Johnson & Johnson that developed and brought Tylenol to market.
But Guren and Gardner have teamed up on a common mission: to connect startups, on the Gulf Coast and into Orlando and Gainesville, with a group of high-achieving current and former executives willing to give their money, time and sometimes both. The group is called Bridge, an acronym that stands for bringing resources, involvement and dollars for growing enterprises.
“There is a hole in the capital stack (in the area) for startup to early stage companies,” Gardner tells Coffee Talk. “And we really need to do more to keep young people here. We need to add an innovation layer to the companies in the area.”
The minimum entry fee to join Bridge is $50,000 toward an investment and $1,000 a year for administrative fees. Guren and Gardner have so far recruited about 25 people for Bridge, who have pledged to invest a combined $3 million. “It's a stunningly impressive group of people,” says Gardner. “There are a lot of big hitters here.”
In addition to capital, Gardner expects Bridge members, depending on the company and opportunity, to help the young entrepreneurs the organization backs with money in other ways. “This area is full of business people with a lot to offer,” says Gardner, an Ohio native who started several health care companies after his J&J career, which included running the Brazil office for the health care giant. “I don't want people in this group who aren't open to mentoring.”
The core challenge Bridge will face, says Gardner, is one other angel and early-stage capital organizations in the region have grappled with. That's finding the right companies to back — in venture capital lingo it's called deal flow. Gardner says the group might look at 100 companies and pick one or two in which two invest. Says Gardner: “If we help find the next Voalte,” says Gardner, referring to a Sarasota mobile health care firm that's grown from startup to more than 100 employees in the last decade, “then this will be a huge success.”
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