The Bangor Angels has raised its third investment fund in five years—and it’s the biggest one yet, both in terms of dollar value and number of investors.

The group of angel investors, most of whom live in or have strong ties to the Bangor region, closed its third fund (Bangor Angel Fund III LLC) in August with nearly $1.4 million raised, according to Fritz Oldenburg, a former physician in Bangor who helped launch the investment group back in 2014.

The group raised its first fund of $600,000 in 2014, followed by a $1.1 million fund in 2016, Oldenburg said. Both of those funds are fully committed, he said.

The number of accredited investors involved in each fund has also increased each round. The first fund had 18 members, followed by 24 members for the second. This third fund has more than 30 members, according to Oldenburg.

In general, Oldenburg said each fund looks to invest in 10 or so companies. That usually means it invests approximately $100,000 at a time. Those 10 or so investments usually comprise two investments in companies outside Maine, with the other eight split fairly evenly between companies in southern Maine and those in the Bangor region, he said.

Current investments include Maine-based companies such as Cerahelix, CourseStorm, Acadia Harvest, NBT Solutions, Orono Spectral Solutions, Redd, and Pika Energy.

The Bangor Angels differs from its southern contemporary, the Portland-based Maine Angels, in an important way. Whereas the angel investors who are members of the Maine Angels share due diligence and deal flow, they ultimately invest as individuals. The Bangor Angels, instead, pool their resources into a fund and then vote as a group on what companies the fund invests in. To purchase a “share” in the fund, an investor must put in at least $10,000.

“The advantage to that is that with $10,000 you can effectively invest in at least 10 companies, depending on how we’re investing the money,” Oldenburg said. “As an individual, it’d be highly unusual that you’d be able to invest less than $10,000 in a single deal.”

The Bangor Angels haven’t realized any investment returns yet (which is to be expected, since it’s still very early in the life cycle of its first two VC funds), but it so far hasn’t lost any of its investments either, Oldenburg said. (The Bangor Angels did invest in Double Blue Sports Analytics, which was acquired in March by an out-of-state firm, but the deal, financial details of which were not disclosed, did not immediately provide any returns to equity shareholders, Oldenburg said.)

He thinks the growth of Bangor Angels is a result of word of mouth and more wealthy individuals realizing they can make these sorts of investments.

“Believe it or not, a lot of people watch Shark Tank,” Oldenburg said. “They find it fascinating and think, ‘Maybe this is something I could do.'”

He’s also made an effort to increase the diversity of the group. He admits there’s still a lot of work to do on this front, but he was able to recruit five female investors to this most recent fund, which is a record.

Ultimately, he hopes the group can play a part in encouraging more Maine entrepreneurs to think big, create jobs, and generate wealth. His experience is that there are plenty of entrepreneurial people in Maine, but most he’s met, especially in northern Maine, are creating businesses that they expect will provide them a living for the foreseeable future. They’re not creating businesses, or “startups,” with the mindset of building them up to a point where it makes sense to sell them, allowing the entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders to pocket the proceeds and then turn to the next venture.

“What I really want is a successful exit from a company, particularly in northern Maine, that we can point at and say, ‘Look at what these people did. They were capable of doing it and so can you,'” he said.