LMI joins venture capital fray in government market
By
Ross Wilkers
Nonprofit consulting firm LMI launches a venture capital fund to find companies in emerging technology domains, not unlike what other government market giants have done.
Nonprofit government consulting firm LMI has launched a new venture capital fund in order to identify and forge partnerships with companies in core areas such as advanced analytics, digital services, logistics, and management advisory services.
As part of that push, LMI has hired Ian Folau as principal for the fund and he joins after prior service as CEO of GitLinks, an open source risk management platform that Infor acquired last year.
LMI Ventures will work in two forms: partnerships with entrepreneurs whose businesses create new technologies or market categories that LMI can infuse into service offerings, and capital investments of seed-to-Series A funding up to and potentially beyond $500,000.
The idea behind those investments is to help portfolio companies get traction and fast-track them into the government market with help from LMI to navigate traditional barriers to entry.
This is not unlike what large companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have done with their respective venture capital organizations.
They use their VC funds to identify technologies they view as disruptive to themselves and the government market, particularly in aerospace-and-defense and emerging digital technologies.
Raytheon also makes similar investments in non-traditional market players through its services business.