News

I am excited to announce that ATS Rentals has been acquired by Lensrentals.

I started ATS Rentals to make gear rentals easy, affordable, and available to everyone. I couldn’t be more pleased to announce this sale to Lensrentals, an industry leader who shares those values.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Lensrentals will absorb the customers and operations from ATS Rentals into their Memphis facility. The ATS Rentals facility in Piper City, IL will close following a transition period.

I am deeply grateful to the many thousands of customers who made ATS Rentals a success. I am even more grateful to the staff and managers at ATS Rentals who did hard work, skilled work, and kind work — dedicating themselves to taking care of every customer.

First Leaf Capital portfolio company Inprentus made a big step forward this week, signing a significant contract to supply custom diffraction gratings for Spain’s ALBA synchrotron facility.

Local pastry chef Kaya Tate is taking her successful business, Hopscotch Bakery, to the next level. She’s rehab’ing a building at 802 W John St., in Champaign, IL to house her new bakery and cafe. We’re impressed by Kaya’s business results and thrilled that she chose First Leaf Capital to provide financing for this expansion.

This video describes the expansion project

SNOOZ Inventor Eli Lazar chats with Paul Wood of the News Gazette’s Wired In, a column for High Tech Difference Makers. Nice job, Eli!

After years of design work and ramping up manufacturing, First Leaf Capital portfolio company SNOOZ has released the SNOOZ White Noise Machine. It’s now available to buy retail here: SNOOZ on Amazon. The SNOOZ team has done meticulous work on thousands of tasks to bring this great product to the market. It’s already selling well. Congrats guys!

First Leaf Capital owner Mark Aardsma will be attending the #InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum in Kansas City MO, on March 28th and 29th. We’re looking forward to meeting promising startups from our part of the Country!

Ryan Shelton, CEO of portfolio company Photonicare Inc did a nice job speaking about the company’s product on a Fox News Chicago segment about startups in our state.

Here’s a link to the video.

Congrats to our portfolio company Photonicare Inc on winning our county’s New Venture award. The team is well-deserving of this recognition for their effort and success to date.

A simply-spoken promo from one of our portfolio companies, BoxCast.

We are excited to formally organize Mark Aardsma’s investment activities into a new investment and venture capital firm. First Leaf Capital, LLC will provide quick, simple, and fair capital funding to select startups and other businesses.