Serial entrepreneur Dan Voell has launched a new Milwaukee-based venture capital fund called Forward Capital Fund.

Dan Voell

Voell is working to raise $10 million to invest in startups in Wisconsin. Forward Capital is part of the Badger Fund of Funds initiative.

Voell, 40, co-founded a precision grinding company in Port Washington, which manufactures implantable medical device components. He helped grow that firm to a $1 million annual run rate in 22 months. Voell previously was a co-founder of defunct startup GoBuzz out of Milwaukee and president of former startup GameFilm360 in Mission Viejo, California. On the finance side, Voell was previously a business banker at Town and Country Bank in Watertown, managed fixed income products for large corporations such as Google at UBS and worked at Brookfield angel investment firm Golden Angel Network. He holds a bachelor’s in finance, investments and banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MBA from Marquette University.

With his background, Voell said he is uniquely suited to his new role.

“There aren’t a ton of investors in town that have gone through the operational side of startups and understand it from the inside,” he said.

Forward Capital Fund will make seed investments of around $500,000 in pre-revenue companies. Voell is particularly focused on investing in advanced manufacturing, spinouts, software and other technologies in the Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha areas.

“I think that there is an unmet need between private equity firms focusing on established businesses and venture capital firms focusing on asset-light startups,” Voell said. “There aren’t as many options for startups with an asset or hardware component.” Read the full story here.