The name “Pearl Street” is written in history with the likes of two of the most successful and well-known companies in the United States; Eli Lilly and Company and L.S. Ayres & Company. These two highly successful companies began their initial operations on Pearl Street in what is now downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Pearl Street Venture Funds envisions being referred to with the same type of prestige and associated with the business savvy innovations that Eli Lilly and Company and L.S. Ayres & Company are today. We were founded with these ideas in mind and strive to attain our goals each and every day.
Two of the leading entrepreneurs in the history of Indiana are Colonel Eli Lilly, founder of Eli Lilly and Company, and Lyman S. Ayres, founder of L.S. Ayres & Company - the leading department store in Indiana for over 100 years. Both of these companies have their roots on Pearl Street in downtown Indianapolis.
“It is unquestionably true that no industrial enterprise has more directly contributed to the fame of Indianapolis as a manufacturing and distributing center than the house of Eli Lilly…”
Colonel Eli Lilly had started two unfulfilling businesses and had personally gone bankrupt by the time he started his pharmaceutical company in 1876 with $1,400…$1,000 of which was borrowed. His first facility was an eighteen by forty foot, two-story, red-brick building on Pearl Street in downtown Indianapolis. The building was torn down in 1893 to make room for a headquarters for the Commercial Club (which became the Chamber of Commerce), an organization Colonel Lilly founded.
L.S. Ayres & Company
In 1905, after being in the dry goods business since 1872, Lyman Ayres built an eight-story “department store” to allow him to expand his offerings. This store (which still stands) is on Meridian Street between Washington and Pearl Streets in downtown Indianapolis.
In 1923 Ayres purchased the old Chamber of Commerce building located just south across Pearl Street, thereby occupying the site of the original Lilly facility. Compounding pharmaceuticals in 1876 and consolidating a variety of retail goods in a single store in 1905 were innovative entrepreneurial pursuits that have sustained as viable Indiana business through decades of change.
We believe “Pearl Street” is symbolic of what business innovation can accomplish and we at Pearl Street Venture Funds are exclusively focused on supporting and nurturing similarly innovative entrepreneurs in the 21st century that passionately and relentlessly pursue their entrepreneurial dreams creating superior returns for the limited partners.