Page 28 - BusinessWest May 30, 2022

Spinning Ideas into Gold
The Alchemy Fund Helps Innovators Transform Ideas into Businesses
By: Elizabeth Sears
When BusinessWest first spoke with the founders of the Alchemy Fund four years ago, their vision of help- ing entrepreneurs spin their ideas into profit- able businesses by providing funds, advisory services, business acumen, and more, was itself just an idea.
And as the Alchemy partners started raising
“It turns out there are a lot of people in this area who have the urge to innovate. We’ve found a bunch of people who are dreamers and ideas people, who saw opportunities and started to act on them.”
the fund, their idea was met with some skepti- cism, they recalled, noting that some wondered out loud if there would be real need for the ser- vices they wanted to provide — if there would be any deals to be made.
In the four years since, those doubts have
largely been erased.
“It turns out there are a lot of people
in this area who have the urge to inno- vate,” said Chris Sims, co-founder and partner of the Alchemy Fund. “We’ve found a bunch of people who are dream- ers and ideas people, who saw opportu- nities and started to act on them.”
And with help from the fund and its founders, many are moving well beyond the concept state and into operation. Overall, Alchemy now has 13 portfolio companies across its two funds that together boast more 73 employees — the majority of which are local.
Holyoke-based Clean Crop Technolo- gies, which produces technology that removes contamination from foods, is one of those companies. Clean Crop could have located anywhere — but chose to be in Western Mass. and is mak- ing it happen here through the help of many components to the region’s entre- preneurship ecosystem, including the Alchemy Fund.
“We were introduced through Forge, an innovation and manufacturing ecosystem sup- port group with offices in Western Mass.,” said Dan White, the company’s CEO and co-founder.
The three partners of the Alchemy Fund, from left, Chris Bignell, Chris Sims, and Brett Gearing, say the Pioneer Valley has no shortage of entrepreneurs with ideas that can be turned into profitable companies.
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MAY 30, 2022
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