Thorne Sparkman is constantly on the hunt.
His quarry? Entrepreneurs with transformational ideas in areas such as health care and energy and the grit to see them through to reality.
Sparkman is managing director of Providence-based Slater Technology Fund, Rhode Island’s most-active seed-stage venture investor that takes an educated chance on technology startups that demonstrate lots of promise.
The role of the nonprofit Slater fund is vital in Rhode Island, where venture capital isn’t exactly flowing.
Sparkman, who joined Slater in 2000 as executive director of what was then called the Slater Center for Interactive Technologies, says the function that the organization serves is taking that “first risk” on a startup and helping entrepreneurs get those first meetings with other investors.
And he and Slater have had success.
The most recent evidence: South Kingstown-based Arctura Inc. in July announced it had won a $1.15 million federal grant to commercialize a wind turbine blade coating designed to reduce damage from lightning. Slater had been one of the early backers of Arctura in 2015.
And in late 2020, another company that had ties to Slater agreed to be acquired by Novartis in a $770 million deal.
The company that was acquired, Cadent Therapeutics, had initially been formed through a merger with a pharmaceutical company in Slater’s portfolio. Novartis allowed Slater to cash out, the fourth time in two years Slater had made a successful exit.
“This kind of success quite literally fuels the impact that entrepreneurs ... can make by augmenting Slater’s evergreen investment in the next generation of ventures,” Sparkman said at the time.