Still, Edison has invested at all stages, backing six startups and 10 early-stage companies. It can be higher or lower. We want to be influential but not controlling. As the sole investor for more than half of its companies at the time it invests and the lead investor for three-quarters of them, Edison has taken a seat on the board of 75 of the 85 companies it has invested in so far. It acts as a primary adviser during the five or six years of its involvement.
Investment usually takes the form of preferred stock convertible to common stock.
We're not so interested in a lot of rights. And although an IPO is the ideal, he says, more often a company either merges with another or is sold. SMX had evolved out of an engineering company that Ackerson started with his father 10 years earlier. Ackerson bought Chesapeake in 1992. Loans from a local bank and state grants from Pennsylvania fueled his business to a point.