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March 24, 2015

Maine Angels puts $2M in 26 deals, sees 2nd exit

File PHOTo / Tim greenway Sandra Stone, chairwoman of Maine Angels, chats with a member during a Maine Angels' meeting at the Portland Regional Chamber in a 2013 file photo.

Maine Angels ended 2014 with more than $2 million invested in 26 deals, including money put into nine new companies.

There also were 17 follow-on deals of various sizes, Maine Angels Chairwoman Sandra Stone told Mainebiz in an email. Stone was a Mainebiz Woman to Watch in 2013.

The nine new deals is a high number for the group, Maine Angels Vice Chairman Don Gooding told Mainebiz in a phone interview.

The Maine investment group has gained national attention since its record year in 2012, when its members invested $3.35 million in 21 deals, ranking it in the top 10 most active angel groups in the United States that year by Halo Group.

Stone said Maine Angels has invested more than $13 million in total since its first deal in 2004.

The group’s members also are benefitting from company exits. Stone said two unspecified members just saw Maine Angels’ second exit, which she categorized as a “partial” exit involving Weston, Mass.-based corporate catering company ezCater Inc.

Shares of ezCater’s stock were sold to Insight Venture Partners. Stone says the venture capitalist offered to buyout A-1, A and B series shares as part of a Series C deal. Maine Angels will retain ezCater in its portfolio since just the A and B shares were sold, Stone said, while some of the original A-1 shares were retained by one member to participate in future growth.

Last October, a couple of Maine Angels saw the group’s first exit return on investment after a Massachusetts-based company in the Maine Angels portfolio, Corbus Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc. of Norwood, Mass., went public. Corbus was formerly known as JB Therapeutics. One of the Maine Angels investors is John Goodrich. The second declined to be identified.

On March 9, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Corbus the go-ahead for a Phase 2 clinical trial of its experimental drug for scleroderma, a chronic and life-threatening inflammatory disease causing excess tissue growth on skin, joints and internal organs.

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