Meet Pipeline Angels member, Kelly Keenan Trumpbour

Meet Pipeline Angels member Kelly Keenan Trumpbour

Full name: Kelly Keenan Trumpbour
Title: Founder; Board Member

Affiliation: See Jane Invest; Baltimore Angels
Twitter handle: @kktrumpbour

Describe the moment when you decided to become an angel:
When a friend was creating a startup, I asked her how I could help. She told me she was looking for angel investors, so I decided to learn what that entailed.

What investments have you made since graduating from Pipeline Angels?
*Woman founder!

Company: Hip Chick Farms
Founders: Jen Johnson* and Serafina Palendach*

Company: DailyWorth
Founder: Amanda Steinberg*

Company: Allovue (follow-on investment)
Founder: Jess Gartner*

Company: GoldBean
Founder: Jane Barratt*

Company: ProDay
Founder: Sarah Kunst*

How many investments do you make per year?
1 to 3.

What are your investment deal-breakers?
The company has to be female founded and run, the need for the product or service has to resonate with me, and I have to see a reality check from team leaders about meeting and overcoming obstacles.

What types of companies do you look to invest in?
Women-owned companies that have a chance at making a significant impact on how consumers or entire markets approach a common task or problem.

What do you look for in an entrepreneur/founding team?
I look for scrappiness, tenacity, confidence backed by results, compassion for employees and customers, and a willingness to take on big, ineffective systems.

How has your background played a role in your angel investing?
I used to train women to run for public office and help them raise campaign funds, which has so many parallels to women deciding to run companies and raise angel investment.

One piece of advice to an angel-in-training?
If you run into any metric or approach that feels dense and overwhelming at first, trust that being in the process itself will help it sink in and become intuitive.

One piece of advice to an entrepreneur looking for capital?
Potential investors are an entirely different audience than potential consumers, and will expect very different information.

How would you define a for-profit social venture?
It seeks to change habits at the consumer, market, or policy level by modeling scalable demand for products and services that can impact society in a positive way.

Favorite quotation?
Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming. ―Alice Walker

Random fact?
I became the first female captain of my high school’s men’s fencing team.

Pipeline Angels, a network of new & seasoned women investors, is changing the face of angel investing & creating capital for women social entrepreneurs. Help us change the face of angel investing! Apply to Pipeline Angels’ angel investing bootcamps in Albuquerque, Ann Arbor-Detroit, Atlanta, Austin-Houston, Baltimore, Bangor-Portland, Boston, Boulder-Denver, Burlington, Cedar Rapids, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland-Akron, Columbus, Dallas, DC, Jackson Hole, LA, Memphis-Nashville, Miami, Minneapolis, New Orleans, NYC, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Portsmouth, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle, SF, Silicon Valley, Tampa, and Vegas: Learn More