If you are the CEO of a new business or an inventor with an idea - then you know that you NEED capital. You also know that one of the best sources of seed capital are Angel Investors. It has been said that most angel investors are “instinctive investors” invest in an idea they believe in while VCs tend to invest in companies that have come further along. The challenging job for the first-time entrepreneur is to find and then convince those angel investors to raise the first million dollars – often through many checks of $25,000, $50,000 or more.
In 2007, angel investors pumped almost $25B into startups in the US, yet angel investors typically reject three quarters of investment proposals sight unseen. This begs the question how does one find angel groups? More importantly what do they want in return for a check? Join the next TechCoire meeting to meet leading angel investors from Northern California as they share their secrets on "How To Raise Your First Million Dollars" from angels.
- How do you get an angel investor to invest in your business?
- What are angel investors looking for?
- What industries they are investing in and what is the typical investment amount?
- Who is funding pre-revenue deals?
- What type of return (exit) they are looking for?
- How they are setting the valuation for Series A companies?
- What do angels really want to see in a business plan?
- Cary Adams, Sacramento Angels
- Graeme Plant, Foothill Angels
- Corley Phillips, Sierra Angels
- Panel Moderated by James Beckwith, CEO, FiveStar Bank
 Cary Adams, Proximal Ventures/Sacramento Angels
Cary Adams is the founder of
ProXimal Ventures, where he manages his angel
investments focused on medical technologies that can
improve patient outcomes, enhance patient safety, and
reduce overall cost. He’s an active member and past
president of Sacramento Angels and his recent angel
investments include Keyeye Communications ,
Claro Medical Imaging, Enkata Technologies, intelliDOT
,NexGen Medical, RegeneMed and Uptake Medical.
The firms he has invested in have gone on to raise over
$130M from over thirty VC firms, with one successful
exit – Khimetrics, acquired by SAP in 2006. He is also
a limited partner in DFJ-Frontier Fund II (via Padaro
Ventures), Wavepoint Ventures, and Tenex Greenhouse
Ventures.
A lawyer by education, he was the
founding partner of Murphy Austin Adams Schoenfeld LLP,
and taught legal issues in Healthcare deliver over a
twenty-year period to JD, MHA and MBA candidates,
earning the USC (Sacramento MHA Program) Adjunct Faculty
Distinguished Service Award in 2006. He serves as a
member of the National Panel of Neutrals of the American
Arbitration Association, available to resolve disputes
as arbitrator or mediator, especially in the health care
industry. He is a graduate of the University of
Virginia and the University of Maryland School of Law,
where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Maryland Law
Review.
Greame Plant, Foothill Angels
 Graeme is currently an Angel Investor, as well as a partner with Compass Point Capital a small local M&A firm. He has held several marketing, project management and business development positions throughout his 25-year career. Prior to his role as an Angel, he was a VP of marketing for Little Mountain Group (LMG) which he successfully sold to QLogic in 2001. At QLogic, Graeme continued in a product marketing and sales leadership role with the LMG technology that positioned QLogic as the market leader in IP Storage networking. Prior to that, Graeme held marketing, sales management and program management roles at ShareWave, a home networking start up; Hewlett Packard and Sprint.
Grame's recent investments include Revionics and
Mutant Logic.
 Corley Phillips – Sacramento Angels & Sierra Angels
Corley Phillips been an active seed-stage investor in Northern California and Northern Nevada since 1993, both individually and in conjunction with the Sierra Angels and the Sacramento Angels. He’s also the Founder & Managing Director of American River Ventures, a $100M fund investing in early stage information technology companies.
Prior to his activities as an investor, Mr. Phillips had a distinguished entrepreneurial career. From 1990 until its successful merger with State of the Art (NASDAQ:SOTA, now part of the Sage Group, LSE:SGE) at the end of 1994, he served as President and CEO of Manzanita Software Systems, an accounting software company based in Roseville, CA. From 1984 to 1990, he was President and co-founder of Grafpoint, a communications software company based in San Jose, California, which merged with White Pine Software (NASDAQ:WPNE, now part of Radvision, NASDAQ:RVSN). He previously held various sales and marketing positions with Envision Technology and Hewlett-Packard.
Mr. Phillips is Chairman of the Board of Synapsense, a Wireless Sensor Networking Software company and is actively involved in various capacities with many boards and non-profits. In addition to numerous prior board positions with private companies and non-profits. Mr. Phillips holds a BSEE and MSEE from Washington University, St. Louis, and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
 Dave Urry - Band of Angels/ Keiretsu Forum
Dave is an active angel investor with Band of Angles, Keiretsu, Keiretsu, Golden Gate Angels and Harvard Angles, David reviews roughly 30 companies a month giving him an excellent view into market trends, investor interests and technology direction as well as trusted relationships with many investors and VCs. David lectures in Marketing and Entrepreneurship at MIT, Harvard and UC Berkeley business schools, did some of the initial research for camera phones in the US market, advised the government on over $1 billion in software development and. David functions as an experienced CMO, VP of Marketing or Board Advisor in marketing and business strategy.
His angel investments include Numobiq (just closed Series-A),Organics to Go(recently IPOed), Telltale Games, Interneer, Lucky Litter, MyWines Direct, Equilibrium, iDataframe, Osean Media and Urban Wind Energy. Prior to his consulting career, he was part of the management team of eSprocket where he ran product development, conducted focus groups, analyzed, redesigned and re-positioned products. He also worked at Painted Word, at Extensity (a Hummer Winblad funded startup with a success IPO). David’s distinguished career also includes stints as a team member of the CORBA administration tools at Sun and as Software Engineer at Oracle.
James Beckwith, CEO, FiveStar Bank
 James Beckwith is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Five Star Bank and Five Star Bancorp, its holding company. He came to Five Star Bank in 2003 with over twenty years of banking experience. Most recently James served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer for National Bank of the Redwoods, in Santa Rosa, California.
Non-Member Payment
|
