Providing Investment & Expertise to Early-Stage Startups

We fund early-stage companies with strong teams, compelling market opportunities, and large growth potential.

The Cantilever Fund

Cantilever Investors Fund is an early stage investor group focused on emerging technology-based companies. Our goal is to discover the best technologies that have compelling commercial opportunities at an early stage of development.

Our fund and associated investors lead, and invest in, seed, pre-seed or early A series financing rounds with multiple exit opportunities. In most cases, we have worked directly with the company founders for months or years before investing, and often play active roles in the commercialization process to protect and insure our investments.

Our portfolio companies have typically performed extensive customer discovery as well as due diligence identifying a market fit and then a business model that can provide market traction.

What We Do

For our LPs, the Fund finds, vets and develops investable early stage companies. Our LPs often co-invest with us or invest independently in opportunities that do not match our Fund investment profile. In each case, we have done the research, leg work and de-risking to make the opportunities available, attractive and more likely to be profitable. We do the initial heavy lifting, so our LPs don’t have to.

Our early checks and follow-on investments can yield high ROIs with high cash-on-cash returns.

Recent News

Novolux Awarded "Up and Coming" Prize!

December 8, 2020

Gathering more than 500 attendees at the Detroit Masonic Temple, the 8th Annual Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition awarded close to $1M in cash and in-kind services from WeWork, Varnum, Lambert & Edwards, Google, and Plante Moran to 11 Michigan-based companies.

(among others) Novolux BioSciences (Houghton) won the Up & Coming Prize of $20,000 + in-kind services from sponsors. The company makes dyes brighter in the discovery and recognition of flow cytometry.

Light Line Medical Recognized as ‘Most Valued Company’ at virtual Keiretsu Forum Investor Capital Expo

November 6, 2020

SEATTLE, WA—Light Line Medical, which has developed a proprietary method of delivering light to prevent and treat catheter-associated infections, was recognized as one of the top three ‘Most Valued Company’ at the Keiretsu Forum Investor Capital Expo that is showcasing 36 late-stage growth companies seeking funding.

Nearly 50 angel groups, investors from 100+ Family Offices, corporate partners, and hundreds of accredited investors have attended the first two sessions of the Expo. Continue Reading.

Acurx Announces All Patients Demonstrated Clinical and Sustained Cure in Ph2A Open-Label Trial of Ibezapolstat for Treatment of C. difficile Infection (CDI)

November 5, 2020

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., Nov. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Acurx Pharmaceuticals, LLC ("Acurx" or the "Company"), a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing an entirely new class of antibiotics for difficult-to-treat bacterial infections, announced that all 10 patients (100%) with mild-to-moderate CDI enrolled in this Ph2A open-label clinical trial met the study's primary and secondary efficacy endpoints following treatment with orally administered ibezapolstat given 450 mg twice daily for 10 days. Continue Reading.

Impact investors in early stage companies