December 12, 2007 — Stateline Angels (SLA), an angel investor organization based in Rockford, IL, has invested nearly $450,000 in Atometric Inc., which develops and produces production-ready, micron-precision machines that can operate in both laboratories and factories to produce parts as small as the head of a pin.
Atometric aims to fill the gap between large production machines that must be installed on the factory floor and desktop machines suitable for research but not practical for machining production parts. “Solving that problem is at the heart of our business,” says company president Tom N. Lindem. “Researchers can use our machine in the laboratory — it draws about the same power as a plasma TV and plugs into a regular 110 volt AC outlet. It is also a serious factory machine.”
Because micro-machining is in a fairly early stage, Lindem expects that the next wave of Atometric machines will go mostly into laboratories and R&D facilities of companies developing products. “With our machines, a company can perfect their prototype plastic or metal parts, and then once they are ready for production they can use the same machine to mill or drill thousands of production parts.”
Atometric presented all the characteristics that Stateline Angels is looking for in an early stage portfolio company, says Dale Falconer, president of Stateline Angels. “. . . we approached our investment in Atometric from a hard business point of view. We know and have strong confidence in the company leadership and after reviewing the technical aspects we concluded that the product is very good.”
Members of Stateline Angels are accredited investors and invest as individuals in an LLC that becomes the shareholder in their portfolio companies. “A typical investment from us would be in the $100,000 to $300,000 range,” Falconer says, “but our members recognized that Atometric offers a solution that is seriously needed and particularly unique.”
“This capital will allow us to step up our sales focus and add core positions in engineering and marketing,” Lindem says. “We will also be able to establish minimal inventory that allows us to improve our order-to-ship lead time significantly.”