By Scott Meacham
There is no monopoly on great ideas.
Capital begats capital. That’s the drumbeat setting the cadence for the i2E Management Company, Inc. (iMCI).
iMCI is a private for-profit investment and fund management firm operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of i2E. iMCI manages more than $90 million across five venture funds. The company makes investment decisions and provides investment services as a general partner and managing member to a growing number of privately managed venture capital funds from other states. iMCI creates a two-way access to high quality, well-vetted deal flow from Oklahoma and across the central region of the U.S.
Justin Wilson recently joined our team as managing director and president of iMCI.
Humble beginnings
Justin grew up in Wright City in McCurtain County, about as far southeast as you can go and not be in Arkansas. “I grew up in extreme poverty,” he said, “not uncommon in that part of the world. I left home at fourteen and saw education as my way of escaping that cycle that grips so much of rural Oklahoma. My goal was to get full scholarship to OU or OSU.”
And he did.
“The greatest barrier to economic success for poor rural kids is not a lack of aptitude, it is a lack of exposure and of resources,” said Justin. “The only avenues of success I had ever known at that point in life were law and medicine. I thought engineers drove trains. I didn’t grow up dreaming of working in venture capital, because I didn’t know that such a thing even existed. Before I knew it, I had earned a Bac