Mark Aardsma

Mark Aardsma is a serial entrepreneur turned investor based in Champaign–Urbana, Illinois. He began building companies young: at 24 he launched a software business out of his basement; at 26 he co-founded ATS Acoustics, an acoustic-panel manufacturer; and at 28 he started ATS Rentals, a nationwide lens, video, and projector rental operation. He grew two of these into multi-million-dollar businesses and sold ATS Rentals to LensRentals in 2017. Not every venture succeeded — a big-data transportation-logistics company he started in 2015 failed, an experience he has written about candidly on his personal blog.

In 2017 he founded First Leaf Capital, an investment firm that invests in startups, makes loans to small-business owners, and executes micro-private-equity transactions. The firm is capitalized both by the Aardsma family office and by outside limited partners through its institutional fund, FLC II. It offers unusually flexible structures — convertible notes, venture equity, venture debt, revenue-based financing, bridge notes, term loans, and business lines of credit — and concentrates on Central Illinois and the Midwest, a region many coastal VCs overlook.

Beyond investing, Aardsma is an author and coach. He published *Investing with Purpose* (Career Press, 2016) and worked as a business coach and consultant from roughly 2013–2016, a practice he now limits to portfolio companies and board roles. He served seven years on the board of Farmers-Merchants National Bank in Paxton, Illinois (until its 2018 sale) and has been involved with the Mindful Teacher Foundation. A licensed pilot since 2015, he flies his own aircraft and lives in central Illinois with his wife and four children.

• Invests across an unusually wide range — from ~$1,000 loans to ~$5 million equity checks — at pre-seed through Series A.
• Looks for "hardworking entrepreneurs, products that solve substantive problems, hard-to-imitate advantages, lean market validation, and realistic goals."
• Strong bias toward defensible, hard-to-imitate technology and durable competitive advantages, frequently backing university- and research-driven deep-tech and medical-device companies.
• Flexible, founder-friendly capital: convertible notes, venture equity/debt, revenue-based financing, bridge notes, term loans, and lines of credit rather than a single rigid structure.
• Regionally focused on Central Illinois and the Midwest, aiming to fund strong local companies that lack easy access to coastal venture capital.
• Explicitly avoids human-therapeutic drug development, cryptocurrency, cannabis, and consumer-facing retail/ad-tech.
• Offers portfolio companies "quick decisions, simple and fair terms, credible introductions to our trusted network, and strategic input from a winning founder."