If you're getting this, it's because you've built something, backed something, or have the network and expertise that helps others do both. Maybe you're raising. Maybe you're investing. Maybe you're just curious about what's being built in your own backyard. Whatever it is — I can't think of a better way to connect a community that wants the best for Montana. Glad you're here.
— Graham Conran, Frontier Angels
The Deal Putting Montana on the Private-Markets Map
Hey What's Next?! Subscribers —
The headline this month is being written in Bozeman, not Sand Hill Road. On April 28, KoreInside — the infrastructure firm building what it calls the "DTCC-equivalent for private capital markets" — entered a definitive MOU to acquire 100% of Bozeman-based PandoAlts. Terms were not disclosed.
This is a Montana-built fintech outcome with serious institutional weight behind it. Worth a few minutes of your attention — both for what it says about PandoAlts and for what it says about what our ecosystem and our growing Fin-tech track record.
🏔️ Montana Ecosystem Update
PandoAlts → KoreInside: the deal that matters.
Founder Ralph "Cash" Lafferty built PandoAlts into a serious player in private-markets infrastructure — a connectivity, order, and execution-management platform that ties wealth managers, RIAs, broker-dealers, and asset managers into a single workflow for alternative investments, with integrations into the major portfolio management systems (eFront, Allvue, Addepar, Orion, and others).
The acquirer's footprint is worth understanding:
KoreInside is led by co-founder/CEO Oscar Jofre Jr. and is part of the broader Kore group (KoreConX, KoreTransfer, KoreChain).
Across the Kore platform: 200,000+ companies use the equity management infrastructure; clients have raised $2B+ through it.
Owns KoreChain — the first SEC-qualified blockchain for private securities.
Total funding raised to date: $12.5M (PitchBook).
David Weild IV — the "Father of the JOBS Act" — sits on KoreInside's advisory board.
Powers broker-dealers, ATSs, funding portals, transfer agents, banks, credit unions, and RIAs through white-label, API-first platforms.
Why it matters: the global private capital market sits at $10T+ and remains fragmented, manual, and opaque. Bain projects alternative AUM held by private wealth investors will triple from $4T today to $12T by 2034. Combining KoreInside's clearing/settlement/compliance rails with PandoAlts' distribution layer is exactly the consolidation play that's been forming in this category for years. A Bozeman company is now in the middle of it. Founders and investors should pay attention.
TeraDact is putting Missoula on the data-protection map. Missoula-based TeraDact — enterprise redaction, secrets detection, and tokenization for regulated industries and government records — had a strong April. Term sheet in hand from a lead investor on their seed round; an invitation to present at the Department of War, plus a featured slot at the NexGen 3.0 FOIA Tech Summit, where they're demonstrating a 90% reduction in FOIA processing time. First Australian agency go-live shipped in April; deployments now span three of the Five Eyes nations, with a fourth expected by year-end. Pipeline running at ~3 demos/week with a ~3-week sales cycle from demo to contract, and the first enterprise customer scaling toward six-figure ARR. CEO Chris Tilleman is building exactly the kind of dual-use Gov + Enterprise data-security category that should be on every Montana investor's radar. If you have CISO, Heads of Data Governance, or agency procurement contacts — they're asking for warm intros.
Fishbyte is a Bozeman-based fishing app built by anglers, for anglers. Founders Pat and Benjamin are building an offline-first platform focused on high-quality fishing data across the western U.S. In addition to fish-distribution and access layers, the app provides water-condition information with real-time flows, water temps, and 10-year seasonal averages. Saltwater data and additional states are coming soon. The product is private by design — no social feeds or spot sharing. Check out the App HERE.
MSU's pipeline is worth watching. The 2026 $100K Venture Competition finalists pitched April 21 in Bozeman. A few names worth noting for deal-flow radar:
Coincident Systems — coordination and decision-making infrastructure for rural healthcare networks.
indelible.Blob — image-authenticity protocol; every photo timestamped and verified at capture.
COPILOT by Big Sky Dynamics — edge-AI cockpit adviser for general aviation pilots, real-time spoken guidance during emergencies.
These are early-stage, founded-from-scratch, Montana-based. Exactly what we're looking for.
Defense is putting down roots in Montana. MSU's DIU OnRamp Hub — the Department of Defense's official front door for dual-use tech — has already identified 100 Montana companies with technology the DoD can use, just months after launching last August. The hub connects Montana startups directly to nearly $1B in annual DIU funding. If you're building anything in defense, aerospace, autonomy, or advanced manufacturing, this is the conversation to be in.
The headline number: Montana registered 8,000+ new businesses in March 2026 alone — the strongest single month on record — and 21,000+ since January. Not all tech, but the volume signals real economic confidence. (MT Secretary of State)
Seeing deal flow we should know about? Reply to this email.
📡 What We're Watching
While SF hoards capital, we're hunting in Montana & the Rockies West.
Global venture funding hit $56 billion in April — up 100% year over year. Twenty-eight new unicorns minted in a single month. AI is producing billion-dollar companies at a pace that makes the dot-com era look restrained.
And yet: two-thirds of U.S. startups are being built outside the Bay Area, while Bay Area VCs hoover up 45% of seed dollars (up from 28% just two years ago). That gap creates a growing opportunity for angel investors to find and finance early stage technology companies without nose bleed valuation - back to angel investing basics!.
Founder-market fit is the new "technical co-founder."
AI has made it cheap and fast to build almost anything. The result? Investors are drowning in "startup slop" — polished decks, working demos, and real-looking traction that can be fabricated in an afternoon. The signal has degraded.
Smart investors are pivoting their evaluation criteria. Per Crunchbase, what actually differentiates a fundable team today is domain expertise that predates the startup — founders who've lived the problem, own the customer relationships, and can articulate a path to market that a well-funded competitor can't just replicate with more engineers.
Deep tech is harder to fake.
Hardware, advanced manufacturing, industrial B2B — these require real supply chains, real partnerships, real domain knowledge. Investor interest in deep tech has been climbing steadily, and it's not hard to see why. We're paying attention to hard-tech deals with a Montana angle: ag tech, energy, defense, precision manufacturing. We might even be launching a fund to get after this opportunity… stay tuned!
💡 One Big Idea
The lean startup is back — but leaner than ever.
The average seed-stage company in 2025 had just 6 employees, down from 10+ in 2021 (per Carta). AI is compressing headcount requirements at every stage of the build. That has a direct implication for how we evaluate burn rates and capital efficiency in early deals.
A company doing $500K ARR with 4 people in Bozeman is a fundamentally different — and potentially better — business than one doing the same numbers with 15 people in San Francisco. We're adjusting our mental models accordingly. You should too.
📅 Coming Up
Our next Frontier Angels member dinner is June 17 @ Kiln in Bozeman. If you're curious about angel investing, are an accredited investor, and want to check out how we roll — reach out directly: [email protected].
And if you've seen deal flow worth sharing — a company, a founder, a sector that's catching your eye in Montana — reply to this email. The best deal flow in this network comes from our members and readers themselves.
What's Next?! Montana is published by Frontier Angels. Forward freely.