Seed-Stage Investor

Slater is an evergreen not-for-profit seed fund dedicated to supporting new venture development in Rhode Island. We invest in early-stage technology ventures founded by entrepreneurs who have the vision, courage and tenacity to build companies that aim to achieve transformational impact in the industries or markets they serve.

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Investment Criteria

  • ▸ Seed- and early-stage capital
  • ▸ Software, energy, life sciences
  • ▸ Transformative technologies aimed at the world’s biggest problems
  • ▸ Commitment to building and basing locally

  • ▸ Seed- and early-stage capital
  • ▸ Software, energy, life sciences
  • ▸ Transformative technologies aimed at the world’s biggest problems
  • ▸ Commitment to building and basing locally

By the Numbers

INVESTED

$35.7mm

FUNDING RAISED*

$690mm

ACQUISITIONS & OTHER LIQUIDITY

33

JOBS YEARS OF EMPLOYMENT

4,480

*Follow-On Funding Raised by Portfolio

Slater by the Numbers

INVESTED

$35.7mm

FUNDING RAISED*

$690mm

ACQUISITIONS & OTHER LIQUIDITY

33

JOBS YEARS OF EMPLOYMENT

4,480

*Follow-On Funding Raised by Portfolio

Hear from our Managing Director, Thorne Sparkman

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What We Do

INVEST >
We are experienced early-stage investors.

We lead- or co-invest in early-stage ventures founded by entrepreneurs who have the vision, courage and tenacity to build companies that aim to achieve transformational impact. We seek to hear from entrepreneurs who are passionate about changing the world, and look for opportunities that solve clear, unmet needs and have the potential to attract the people and resources that great ventures thrive upon.

SUPPORT >
We partner with entrepreneurs to help them succeed.

We are the entrepreneur’s first and foremost ally, helping to create the early momentum to ensure their ventures succeed. We are often the first money in, delivering the capital, experience, perspective, and support entrepreneurs need to turn their ideas into reality. We constantly seek others with that orientation to form a network we can share, to make customer, partner and investor introductions, recruit new team members, identify additional funding opportunities, and share best practices.

CONNECT >
We continually provide opportunities to create meaningful connections.

Community is a core part of Slater’s value proposition and our events are a significant part of that. We hold informal networking events, formal presentations, and panel discussions to bring value to our portfolio companies – both current and future – by connecting them with each other and with potential partners, investors, customers and employees.

Our Team

Thorne Sparkman
Managing Director, Slater Technology Fund

Thorne Sparkman is responsible for the firm’s investments across a range of sectors. Thorne focuses on the earliest stage of company creation, often working with university-based teams commercializing research. He serves as a board member for Voltserver, CarbonPoint, HappyNest, Prothera Biologics, Datarista, Advanced Image Enhancement, and Tizra Software, and as a board observer at RxVantage, Lenoss Medical, Squadlocker, Drive Time Metrics, eNow, Arctura, Vitae and Carethread. He was previously involved with Location, Inc. (acquired by CoreLogic NYSE:CLGX), Andera (acquired by Bottomline Technologies, NASDQ: EPAY), VCharge (acquired by OVO Energy) Mofuse (acquired by The Search Agency), MTI Film and MTI Machine vision (acquired by DVT Corporation, NASDQ: CGNX), GeneSpectrum (acquired by NABsys), Swyx, Tazz Networks, and ModEnergy (acquired by Enersys NSDQ: ENS) among others.

Thorne is an avid supporter of the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC) and Cleantech Open. He enjoys working with young entrepreneurs as a guest lecturer at Brown University and its Nelson Center for Innovation, the University of Rhode Island, the New England Medical Innovation Center, and at accelerators such as MassChallenge, and at Brown University’s B-Lab. He is a frequent panelist at national and local conferences, and his articles on entrepreneurship have appeared in publications including The Providence Journal, Mass High Tech, American Venture, and the Providence Business News. Thorne holds a B.A. from Harvard and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Bob Chatham
Director, Slater Technology Fund

Bob has been a founder or early employee of nine technology companies, four of which have gone public or been acquired (he learned a lot from the other five). His sales and marketing experience in growing technology companies began at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), where he worked on software for R&D, clinical trials, and parallel computing, followed by startups in software tools; financial services (Andera, which was acquired by Bottomline Technologies NASDAQ: EPAY); online advertising and analytics (Visual Sciences NASDAQ: VSCN, acquired by Adobe); and energy (VCharge, acquired by OVO Energy). Bob also served as an industry analyst at Forrester Research, where he covered sales and marketing software and customer experience, authoring over 250 pieces and advising Fortune 500 companies. He was chief marketing officer at four of his firms and loves a good data set, regularly diving into Excel on behalf of prospective Slater portfolio companies. 

Bob grew up in Europe, Africa, and Asia, and earned a B.A. in Computer Science from Colgate University.

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