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