The evening also featured local powerhouses of tech and real estate investment, including Fletcher McCusker, CEO of UAVenture Capital Fund, LLC who was recognized at the event as the recipient of the 2018 Investor Influence Award for Community Sustainability. The auspicious environment brought together the investor community on a very different level than has been done before…with a little fun.

“These are the kind of cocktail parties that happen all over Palo Alto but not so much here, so this really unusual for us,” said Fletcher McCusker, CEO of UAVenture Capital Fund. “The biggest problem our entrepreneurs have today is capital. We didn’t raise a dollar in Tucson, we kept our companies here, but we had to go to Paris, London, New York, Boston, Dallas, and Silicon Valley for money. What we are all doing together now is just trying to making it a little easier for an inventor to raise capital.”

The signature event was presented by BMW of Tucson, and special guests included Michael DiGrazia from UBS Financial Services, Inc. who presented the award to McCusker and later introduced David Carlson (Palm Lane Capital – Texas), Joseph Snyder (Lannister Holdings, Inc. – Phoenix), and Andy Noy (Consensys Capital – New York). Capital & Cocktails marks a new and shared mission by Shot Ventures and partner firms to create investor community and unlock Arizona’s isolated marketplace.

“Arizona investors are normally isolated and often do deals in a silo,” said Shot Ventures’ Partner, Dominique Villela. “This means the new generation of tech entrepreneurs and their funders are limited in learning about local success and even some failures. Shot Ventures is changing that by increasing visibility of those opportunities, building an investor community, and solidifying Arizona’s position in the U.S. economy.”

Since conception, Shot Ventures has been aimed at providing companies with investor guided packaging and highly specific pre-capital services. The firm grew in 2017 from providing investor-tailored services to structuring their own fund and expanding investor networks internationally. Shot Ventures has supported upwards of $300MM in capital raises and has been focused on creating new systems to ease due diligence activities for funders and founders alike, ultimately helping investors identify fundable targets more rapidly.

• For more information on this topic or to schedule an interview with Shot Ventures or Capital & Cocktails sponsors, partners, and any participants, contact Humberto Stevens via email at humberto@shotventures.com .