3c hapter - Index of

Community Capital 121
That’s where Eli Moulton comes in. Moulton was born and
raised in Huntington, Vermont, just outside of Burlington. After
law school, he worked at a big law fi rm in Boston, doing corporate
deals for Fortune 500 clients, before returning home
to Vermont to join the husband- and- wife team of Merritt &
Merritt (now Merritt & Merritt & Moulton), which had carved
out a niche in early stage funding and private equity. Moulton
has become the go- to guy for area entrepreneurs in need of
solutions—a sort of Dudley Davis for creative fi nancing. It doesn’t
hurt that he’s a home brewer and outdoorsman, which his largely
food and agricultural clients can relate to. “One of the things we
run into every day is trying to reconcile this whole movement for
slow money and local investing and supporting these early stage
investments with the regulatory regime that exists,” says Moulton.
“It was created in the Great Depression to protect investors from
risky investments, and there is this constant tension between
those two things.”
Moulton helped Stearns structure the High Mowing Seeds
deal, though he admits he was skeptical at fi rst. “The market rate
for such a loan was more like 7 or 8 percent,” he explains, with a
maturity date closer to fi ve years. “Tom was a little bit ahead of the
curve in recognizing that there are a lot of investors out there that
want to get some social return on their capital.”
Since then, Moulton has helped several other Hardwick- area
entrepreneurs raise money, including Claire’s Restaurant, a favorite
gathering spot in Hardwick that gets its ingredients from local farmers
(its motto: Local ingredients, Open to the World). Moulton is fond
of tiered offerings that target different investment structures for
different investor groups. Claire’s, for example, raised a big chunk
of equity from accredited investors in a private offering, while 50
smaller investors bought prepaid “food coupons” at $1,000 a piece,
entitling them to $25 off a meal once a month for four years.
Sometimes Moulton adds a middle tier of debt or notes, issued in
smaller denominations to a wide group of community investors.
Another main hub of Hardwick’s economic activity, and its
heart and soul, is the monthly gathering of a dozen or so local
business owners who began meeting many years ago to socialize