The Founders Club, (www.founders-club.com), a unique venture capital equity exchange fund, announced that it has accepted an undisclosed angel investment from the partners of US venture capital firm Meritage Funds. Meritage VC Ryan Pollock has joined the Technology & Cleantech team of Venture Advisors at the club. The partners of Meritage Funds invested their own personal cash as part of The Founders Club angel round and join a powerful syndicate of other VCs, fund of funds VC investors, CEOs and entrepreneurs in the US and Europe.

Andrew Romans, founder and general partner, said: “The commitment of the partners at Meritage Funds with a personal investment demonstrates that seasoned VC veterans in the US see value in the club. The Meritage founders have a very strong investing track record in the USA and Europe over the past 30 years. With over $600M of assets under management and a unique model for combining operating and venture talent, Meritage is an ideal addition to our ecosystem. The investment by the Meritage team, and the addition of Ryan Pollock as a Venture Advisor, represent an important beachhead into the US market as we build on the club’s existing relationships with the best Founders, CEOs and Venture Capitalists worldwide.”

Ryan Pollock of Meritage said: “We have been a sounding board for this innovative ecosystem since Andrew first came up with the idea. Now that The Founders Club is a reality, we wanted to join as both participants as well as investors.” Pollock continued, “Meritage has always brought a global perspective and network to the entrepreneurs it backs. Our participation in the club fits with our approach to venture investing and we believe membership in the club will provide us with access to a powerful international group of respected entrepreneurs and fellow VCs who have uniquely aligned their incentives to collaborate.”

The Founders Club is an established family of funds where VC backed entrepreneurs agree to invest a percentage of their future equity returns into one of The Founders Club funds in return for fund ownership and membership in the club. There is no cash cost to join. Members only contribute cash from proceeds at the time they sell or liquidate their equity position in their company. Each fund comprises between 20-30 high potential venture backed portfolio companies, thereby affording any single entrepreneur a strategy to create wealth while accomplishing portfolio diversification. Portfolio companies are selected by committees comprised of Venture Advisors from premier venture capital firms in the US, Europe and Israel. Entrepreneurs accepted into the club on this basis have access to other members as well as the venture capitalists serving on our Venture Advisory committees.

The Founders Club is currently accepting the final few members into its two existing portfolios, namely: Healthcare & Life Science Fund I (biotech pharmaceutical, medical devices, healthcare IT & services) and Technology & Cleantech Fund I (classic ITC, mediatech & environmentally friendly technology).

Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE:CCI) announced that it has completed its acquisition of NewPath Networks, Inc. (”NewPath”), one of the leading providers of distributed antenna systems (”DAS”). DAS is a network of antennas connected by fiber to a communications hub designed to facilitate wireless communications services for multiple operators. In connection with the acquisition, Mike Kavanagh, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of NewPath, has joined Crown Castle’s U.S. operations as President of DAS operations.

“We are pleased to be combining the NewPath and Crown Castle DAS teams to capture opportunities in the market and provide customized infrastructure solutions to wireless carriers,” stated Mr. Kavanagh.

“Increasingly, we believe that distributed antenna systems will be an important complement to traditional tower installations,” said Ben Moreland, Crown Castle President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are pleased with our acquisition of NewPath, which furthers our ability to extend wireless infrastructure beyond those areas served by traditional towers, thereby broadening our service offering in this growing market.”

Meritage is pleased to announce its investment in Access Media 3 (”AM3″). Meritage was joined by co-investor WP Global in this transaction. AM3 provides triple-play media services (high-speed Internet, satellite TV and voice) to the multiple dwelling unit (“MDU”) market. AM3 is highly focused on converting the large majority of its customers to bulk billing relationships with approximately 80% of its customers today falling into that category.

The capital raised by AM3 will quickly be used to execute on the Company’s aggressive strategy to grow through acquisitions and organic growth. AM3 is positioning itself as an intermediate aggregator. There are a significant number of small video, data and voice providers that are too small to be of interest to a large buyer, but sufficiently large to be a good target for AM3. To date, the Company has completed six highly strategic acquisitions including inVision Networks, SkyPix, the satellite assets of Tunnel Vision Technologies, Avvid, OnShore Networks and Grand Plaza. AM3 has grown from addressing the media needs of 3,000 customers to well over 26,700 customers and 32,700 Revenue Generating Units in less than 3 years. The infusion of capital will also allow the Company to accelerate its plans to continue delivering innovative products and services to its customers through its state-of-the-art back office infrastructure.

In addition to the fact that this investment is a perfect fit for Meritage’s Venture Growth strategy, AM3 is attractive because the Company is EBITDA positive today and has no debt. The management team is also a strong positive, as the CEO has had success in building and profitably exiting a large network-enabled service business through both organic growth and acquisitions.

Meritage is pleased to announce our recent investment in NewPath Networks. Based in Seattle, NewPath is engaged in the construction and operation of Distributed Antenna Systems (“DAS”) for wireless carriers. DAS provides wireless carriers with an alternative to traditional communications towers as a mechanism for improving the capacity of their networks. DAS networks are particularly valuable in high-density population areas where construction of communications towers is not feasible because of zoning and other regulatory restrictions.

Existing cellular networks were originally optimized for voice traffic only. With the recent proliferation of wireless data services, these networks have become overloaded in many areas with a resulting degradation of signal quality. (Meritage has pursued mobile data content and services as an investment theme for some time, with representative investments including MCN and Crisp Wireless.) To accommodate the increasing demand for capacity, wireless carriers are making massive investments in infrastructure to convert their networks from 2G to 3G and 4G. In fact, nearly all carriers confirm that their 2009 infrastructure spend with be in line with 2007 and 2008 despite the current economic crisis: they simply can’t slow down because their customers are consuming more and more content and demanding better performance. To address this need, fiber-fed DAS networks provide wireless carriers with a quickly-deployable and cost-effective solution for wireless networks that are capacity-constrained.

NewPath is an excellent fit with Meritage’s network-enabled services investment focus. One of the key elements of our investment focus is the recurring nature of our companies’ revenues. In today’s environment, recurring revenue is more valuable than ever. NewPath has excellent revenue visibility and stability because its network services are provided under 10-year contracts with its carrier customers and the company has a significant backlog of business under contract. As with the tower industry, contract renewals are virtually assured as it doesn’t make economic sense for a competitor to overbuild an existing DAS network. Meritage’s operating expertise and sector knowledge is also an excellent fit with NewPath, as our partners have both run and invested in fiber network companies, tower companies and cellular carriers.

We believe the DAS industry is on the cusp of explosive growth, as DAS has recently become a strategic part of the carriers’ network architecture. More and more neighborhoods are resisting the addition of unsightly communications towers, yet these same residents need and want better cell phone coverage and capacity. We believe DAS is the answer, and NewPath is leading the charge as one of only three independent providers of DAS services in the US. NewPath differentiates itself from the competition through its selection of high quality opportunities: NewPath works primarily with the leading wireless carriers such as AT&T and Verizon and is very selective about the markets it pursues. Last year, in a highly competitive process, AT&T selected NewPath to build the largest outdoor DAS network in the United States in Scottsdale, Arizona, a testament to the company’s capabilities. As with the tower business, multi-tenant lease-up is critical for maximizing profitability in DAS networks. NewPath has demonstrated strong historical lease-up performance and believes that demand for its networks will continue to grow.

Needless to say, we are excited about the growth prospects for NewPath and are encouraged by the quality of business opportunities the company has recently been awarded. Given the limited competition in the DAS market and the fact that mobile telephony and data services are one of the few areas of the economy showing growth, we believe NewPath will be a dominant player in this segment.