George Richmond, the founder of New Mexico Angels and a pillar in New Mexico’s investing scene, died on Jan. 14 after a short battle with cancer. He was 84.
His wife of more than 40 years, Sheila Richmond, confirmed his death to Albuquerque Business First on Friday.
“George Richmond embodied being a fine New Mexican," said Drew Tulchin, the current president of the New Mexico Angels. "In establishing the New Mexico Angels, he leveraged his skills and relationships in business to establish a community to support, develop and grow local startups that improved our cities, counties and state. He did this with excellent goodwill, humor and kindness."
Born in Greenwich, Connecticut, Richmond grew up the son of a businessman. His father co-owned a textile firm — Crompton Co. — that operated for 175 years before shutting down in 1982 due to foreign competition.
Richmond graduated from Loomis High School — an all-boys boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut — in 1955 before earning an undergraduate degree in economics from Lafayette College. Richmond also enrolled in a graduate studies program at the Baruch School of Business at City University of New York some years later.
His career began in 1962, however, when he landed a job at Chemical Bank in New York as a personal trust advisor.
Climbing the ladder one step at a time, Richmond for two years worked as a financial analyst for Trans World Airlines — one of the largest airline carriers in the United States at the time — from 1965 to 1967.
Richmond continued to analyze airline stocks years after his departure from Trans World Airlines, making stops on Wall Street, with J.R. Timmins and at Butcher & Sherrerd in Philadelphia.
But in 1978, Richmond got his first taste of private investing when he took on a role with Northern Trust Co. in Chicago — a company he worked with for seven years.
"That's where I got my first exposure to venture capital funds," Richmond told New Mexico Business Weekly — now known as Albuquerque Business First — in 2006. "In the end, the bank changed its mind about doing those investments and I moved on to another job, but I learned a lot while there."
After working at Northern Trust Co., Richmond spent 10 years analyzing stocks and bonds in Detroit. And by 1995, Richmond had started his own investment firm, The Richmond Corp. The firm allowed him to invest his own savings over the years in privately-owned companies.
That didn’t mean, though, that Richmond’s eagerness at carving a path in investment didn’t come with its downfalls.
Richmond told Business First in 2006 that he had invested nearly $100,000 into a long-distance telephone company. But as wireless phone service became more widely adopted, the phone company was sold and Richmond lost two-thirds of his investment.
But in other cases, Richmond hit the jackpot. Having invested $50,000 into a company that was developing Y2K software, Richmond returned $1 million back on his initial investment.
"It was one of those one-out-of-10 deals that really work out," Richmond had said.
By 1998, Richmond had moved out west and settled in Albuquerque with his wife and began to carve out an investment legacy in New Mexico.
Uniting local investors — "...there were only like five venture capital firms operating in the state at that time," Richmond said — he formed New Mexico Private Investors Inc. in 1999 “to pull people together." The group, now known as the New Mexico Angels, started out with just six people.
"My thinking based on some investing experience in Chicago and Detroit where I was investing on my own or with just one or two people, was that a larger group of people with different skills, talents and background would be more successful than just one or two," Richmond said in an interview with New Mexico Angels’ board of directors chair John Rice.
His legacy in investing had a profound effect on future investors.
Dorian Rader, managing partner and co-founder of OneTen° Capital and former VP of the New Mexico Angels, first met Richmond in 2009 when she pitched her water tech company to him and the New Mexico Angels as part of the University of New Mexico's Anderson School of Management business plan competition.
"None of us would be here without him," Rader said. "There wouldn't be venture capital, there wouldn't be all of these companies in the ecosystem we have without him. ... I'm personally indebted to him, and I hope we can carry on his legacy."
John Chavez, former president of the New Mexico Angels from 2008 to 2020, first met Richmond in 2004 when he became a member of the New Mexico Angels. That relationship transpired into multiple co-investments into companies, Chavez said, including their first together when they invested in a company called Comet Solutions.
"He was the visionary that saw that New Mexico needed this type of capital," Chavez said.
Richmond's interests weren't exclusive to his work in investing. He volunteered with local nonprofits and sat on the boards of the New Mexico Symphony, Opera Southwest, Amy Biehl Community School and the League of Women Voters of Central New Mexico, his wife said.
Richmond, in fact, was the fourth vice president for the board of directors for the League of Women Voters from 2016 to 2019, said Karen Wentworth, who served as the League of Women Voters president during that time.
"George was the kind of member who drives League president's crazy," Wentworth said. "He was always pushing hard to make this organization better, more active, more inclusive [and] more aggressive in educating voters."
Richmond's age didn't stop him from still working towards the things he was passionate about. Even after his time as VP with the League of Women Voters, he still participated in New Mexico Public Regulation Commission meetings on behalf of the League "to help keep them informed," Sheila Richmond said.
His passion for civic service included writing multiple letters to the editor at the Albuquerque Journal over the years, Chavez said.
"You opened up the Albuquerque Journal on Sunday and there's George's name," Chavez said.
Richmond leaves behind his wife, Sheila, and his daughter, Alexandra Richmond, who lives in Austin, Texas.
