By Martina Pansze

Bozeman-based venture firm Next Frontier Capital announced the close of their $80 million fund III earlier this month. The limited partners backing the raise include educational endowments, financial firms, charitable foundations, and individuals who want to see startups in the Rocky Mountain region succeed.

Partner Les Craig said that the third fund will allow the firm to continue their mission of sourcing the best and brightest founders in the Northern Rockies and helping them grow companies in business applications, deep tech, cloud computing, and data analytics.

Since its 2015 founding by Richard Harjes and Will Price, Next Frontier has established a track record of funding more than 35 companies nationally with 20 of those investments in companies with a headquarters or operating presence in Montana. The firm invested in four such companies in 2020: Special Project, Advisr, Blocky, and VIRIS Detection Systems.

After a turbulent year spent in a pandemic, Next Frontier’s leadership is thinking deeply about how upheaval of standard office life can offer opportunities to bring tech business to Montana.

"The Zoom boom is rewriting the rules of company formation and expansion and separating location from economic opportunity and innovation, said co-founder and General Partner Will Price. “The Rocky Mountain future is very bright, and we are humbled by the Limited Partners’ vote of confidence."

Part of the reimagined workplace Price describes is the relocation of coastal companies’ senior leadership, which offers the possibility to seed new presence locally and create jobs for Montanans.

Advisr, founded in 2018, is an early-stage SaaS platform for sales organizations backed by Next Frontier and headquartered in New York City. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, CEO & Co-Founder Quique Nagle envisioned that his new company could one day open a satellite office in the Rocky Mountain West to grow their back office teams. 

Nagle was searching for a town with a quality university, international airport, and existing tech presence. He considered states like Texas, Colorado, and Nevada that offered tax credits and other corporate incentives, but it was the caliber of professionals and concentration of industry titans that set Bozeman above other locations.

“Montana has a business ecosystem at a level that is dramatically underappreciated,” said Nagle. “What struck me was that the community was so accomplished but also truly welcoming.”

Next Frontier’s network and willingness to share strong strategic support, relationships, and experience as operators was a huge factor in Nagle’s decision to take the cross-country leap. He and his family rented a house in Bozeman for what was supposed to be a six week rental last Spring. A year later, they have only returned to their home in New York City once.

“Next Frontier offers the benefits of a large, coastal venture firm with the personal experience of Montana hospitality,” he said. “I think of the saying: ‘if you build it, they will come.’ In this case it was true—they turned the pipe dream of strategic expansion in Montana into a reality.”

After Nagle arrived in Bozeman, Advisr was in the midst of raising an oversubscribed $4.2 million seed round. Although the company was being pursued by many coastal firms, they chose to take investment, in part, from Next Frontier in August of 2020.

“What's super exciting about [Advisr], and why I think it's a wonderful example, is the potential for growth anywhere in Montana. It's not just Bozeman. It's not just Missoula,” said Craig. “There are founders from smaller towns across Montana who want to return to live and raise their families. There is an opportunity to do that and to bring high tech job creation to any community in Montana, and to be a Montana company, or leadership based in Montana, or growing a new technical team here.”

Advisr has begun to interview candidates in Bozeman and the Mountain West to join Advisr’s team.

Large companies that move to Montana cities bring hundreds of jobs immediately. But long-term, noted Craig, smaller businesses or larger companies that have smaller footprints in Montana foster a more sustainable model of growth.

“It's a more viable way of creating optionality for workers that have already chosen to live here,” he said. “When there are more companies, there's more optionality, there's more jobs, there's more future growth potential. And you're not putting all your eggs in one basket for one massive company. Both are important. But We see the Zoom Boom as potential to create some of these smaller pods that are still very big opportunities for relative job creation across our State.”

About the Publisher: Launched in 2014, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance is an nonpartisan nonprofit association of highly-engaged high tech and manufacturing companies and affiliates creating high-paying jobs in Montana. For more information, visit MTHighTech.org or subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.

About the Author: Martina Pansze is the Communications Director for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. She graduated from Whitman College with a degree in Film and Media Studies.