MaryBeth Matzek: Dairy industry looks to angels

Angel investors could be a catalyst to fund innovation in the dairy industry.

That’s an idea put forward by a team from the UW-Madison’s Department of Dairy Science, Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. and Bunker Labs. Those groups debuted the idea during Dairy Strong 2016: Partners in Progress, an industry event held last month in Madison.

When Stacy Williams and another colleague from Baird attended Dairy Strong in 2015, they saw the potential to gather financial support from both within and outside the dairy industry to fund industry innovations. They then spent the past year thinking about ways to do just that and meeting with people to see if the idea is possible. Williams thinks it is and hopes a fund dedicated to financing industry innovation is up and running by this time next year.

“We’re just starting a dialogue now with the dairy industry and others to see what the interest could be in something like this,” she says. “What’s different about this from some other investment concepts out there is that the potential investors would be the ones to benefit the most from the discoveries.”

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