Clear Innovation Partners (Clear) is a Maine-based firm formed to catalyze and sustain innovation and entrepreneurship in rural and urban economies.  Michael Gurau is Clear's Founder and President and brings twenty seven years of business experience including: fifteen years of early, development and late stage venture capital investment experience, the past eight of which in an economic and community development context that includes management of a federal equity and grant program; twelve years of early stage and new venture creation experience, eight of which—as noted--as an early stage venture capitalist and four of which as a manager of two startup ventures; two years as a product and marketing management for a successful web-based software development business, backed by venture capital and now part of a public company; and four years as an innovation cluster “catalyst.”   Michael has an MBA (1992) from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business and a BS Finance (1984) from Babson College.  He is a Director of the Merriconeag Waldorf School in Freeport and the Tayloe Murphy Institute (TMI) at the Darden School in Charlottesville Virginia; TMI is led by Professor Greg Fairchild--Fairchild was named a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute in 2009 and one of five leading research professors by the Financial Times in 2010.  Michael lives in Freeport Maine with his wife and four children. 

Since 2001, Michael has led CEI Community Ventures (CCV), one of only six SBA New Markets Venture Capital (NMVC) companies in the US licensed to deploy $10M of early stage capital and $3M of operational assistance grant funds to innovative ventures in rural and urban markets in northern New England.  A sister program to the New Markets Tax Credit initiative run by Treasury, the NMVC program was a Clinton administration initiative designed to drive high impact, early stage equity and grant capital into underserved and distressed communities.   CCV is a for-profit subsidiary of Coastal Enterprises Inc (CEI), a leading community development financial institution (CDFI). 

CCV is fully invested and now in harvest (vs. investment) mode, allowing its team time to organize and lead other projects.  Michael has formed Clear Innovation Partners—wholly unaffiliated with CEI and CCV—and will—through its alliance with its non-profit partners--contract with Jen Walker, CCV’s Fund Administrator to administer the RIN initiative.  Similarly, Clear will contract with other professionals as needed to support the activities of RIN.

CCV Highlights: In his successful effort to raise matching grant funds for the NMVC grant program, Michael developed and entered a business plan for CCV to the 2004 Yale-Goldman Sachs Non-Profit Business Plan competition, winning a grand prize and $100,000. Michael’s work with CCV was cited by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 2007 as one of two innovative funds operating in New England secondary cities. Five of nine companies in which CCV have invested have won "best of" awards for design, leadership, technology, product and brand; most have been recognized as market leaders in their respective category.

Market Education: At CCV, Michael developed and led a novel market education program that included a regional financing seminar series (Financing Fast Growth, Financing Innovation Clusters) and a by-lined venture capital and small business column published for state-based business.  Since 2004, Michael and his team have led more than 45 seminars to more than 2500 attendees; using his Clear pen name, Michael presently authors regular columns for Mainebiz, New Hampshire Business Review, Mass High Tech and Providence Business News. Since 2004, Michael has authored more than 120 articles for over ten regional and national publications. Michael also authored two pieces for Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s (FRBB’s) Communities & Banking Magazine the more recent of which was a cover story on industry clusters in New England.  Michael’s recently wrote for Business Week and he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and MSN.