Click here for Part I & Part III

Andy Jones has been a whiff of fresh air, and a bundle of energy, at Maryland Venture Fund since taking its helm as managing director in late 2015. In a little over a year, he is near closing a new fund, is taking the Baltimore-centric fund to other hubs and harnessing the rich IP residing at Johns Hopkins.

“As you know this great state we all live in, there is a lot of deal activity all over the place. So I wanted to make sure when I rebuilt the team that we had people and presence in particularly the important deal geographies,” Jones told citybizlist’s Edwin Warfield in an interview.

Jones earned bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a Masters of Business Administration degree with specialization in finance from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He began his career working in the research labs of Motorola and later earned his spurs in venture investing at Grotech and Boulder Ventures. Jones also ran his own firm, High Street, with swift success.

Maryland Venture Fund has over $100 million under its management and has invested in over 150 technology companies in Maryland.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What are your plans for the Maryland Venture Fund?

ANDY JONES: The legacy Maryland Venture Fund was very Baltimore-centric and as you know this great state we all live in, there is a lot of deal activity all over the place. So I wanted to make sure when I rebuilt the team that we had people and presence in particularly the important deal geographies but I wanted it distributed and become less Baltimore-centric. Back to Parag, he lives in Northern Virginia and as you know there's a lot of activity going on in the D.C., Montgomery County, Northern Virginia area. That's definitely a bigger hub than Baltimore for venture capital investment. So, he was a key hire.

Phil, who had worked with Jim Pastoriza TDF Ventures, he lives in Washington, D.C. He moved from Silicon Valley to D.C. to get his MBA at Georgetown, he worked with Jim, he still lives there today. Arti, she is kind of on the middle of the team in terms of where she lives in the States, she is right there right near our offices in Columbia, Maryland. We are officed in the Tenable Network Security building.

Myself, I moved up in 1995 when I joined with Frank at Grow Tech to Northern Baltimore County. Grow Tech was officed in Timonium, Maryland. So I moved up North and I had my first child in the first year I was working with Grow Tech and we never moved. My wife and I raised our kids there and now they are both in college. So I guess we are free to move again but that is where we raised our kids. Moss, who I said earlier, he lives in Baltimore City so there's a nice geographic dispersion in the five of us across…I will say the key deal quarters in the state of Maryland.

There is a bunch of assets we have inherited when this thing moved over to TEDCO. We call that the Legacy Maryland Venture Fund and in that bucket of assets, it is about $110 million in asset value. There are three types of assets. There is, as you said, there are nine partnerships we are invested in and we are invested in some very high quality funds, Grow Tech, for example, Frank Adams Fund, Flare Capital in Boston. It's a good roster of nine venture investments, that's one bucket of assets we inherited.

There is a second bucket, which I referred to earlier. We inherited 85 direct investments in companies; whether it was debt investments and/or equity investments.

The third bucket is cash. There was a lot of cash that came over in this transaction. So, combined, you add up all those asset values it is about $110 million. It is a big responsibility to manage that. That is what we have started with, we have plenty of cash. As I said earlier, we are really gearing up the new investment process and we are using some of that cash in the Legacy pool of capital to invest in new companies. We are also in the process of raising a new fund. We have not formally closed it yet, but we are going to manage that. We are calling it Fund One under the new regime of Maryland Venture Fund. So, in a few months’ time we will have this new fund online and will also have this Legacy pool of assets that we manage.

What is unique about that Legacy pool of assets? It is an evergreen fund. So when we cash out of a successful investment that capital goes back on the balance sheet. So, in theory, that can be an evergreen source of capital to drive new business growth and new investments in the state of Maryland. So that is kind of an overview of what we manage today.

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn

Sponsored by:

Founded in 1993, WMS Partners is the only independent multi-family office in the Baltimore area that isn’t associated with a brokerage firm, bank or trust company. Our team of approximately 50 professionals and 14 owners spanning three generations assists in the direction of our client’s financial goals and objectives and oversees in excess of $3 billion in assets.

As our client’s advocate and central point for their financial affairs, we work pro-actively with service providers, including accountants, attorneys, consultants, insurance professionals and philanthropic advisors. We are large enough that we provide exposure to many unique ideas and strategies in the investment, estate, tax, financial advisory and risk management arena; but small enough to provide discreet, pro-active individualized guidance.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

Connect on LinkedIn