This is the ninth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Mitch Jacobs, founder and CEO of On Deck Capital, a small business online lending platform.
Irina: Hi, Mitch. Let’s start with your background and how you arrived where you are today.
Mitch: I began a career in entrepreneurship, somewhat unintentionally, as a junior at Dartmouth College. I launched a company that enabled local businesses to accept the student ID card as a form of payment off campus. It had a different name at every campus. Read the full article »
This is the eight interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. I am talking to Padmaja Ruparel, president of Indian Angel Network. She is based in New Delhi, India.
Irina: Hi, Padmaja. Let’s start with your telling us a little bit about yourself.
Padmaja: I have been in the early-stage entrepreneur ecosystem in India for over a decade now. It was something I did in addition to working for a software company as head of Indian corporate communications strategy. I operationalized The Indus Entrepreneur’s (TiE) Delhi chapter back in 1998. Read the full article »
This is the seventh interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. I am talking to M. Todd Dean, Keiretsu Forum’s Northwest Chapter president.
Irina: Hi, Todd. Please tell us about yourself.
Todd: I was in insurance for about ten years, and then through a divorce, I stumbled into a startup company. Some friends and I invested in the company, and I worked for the company for about a year and a half, and it went bankrupt. And the reason it went out of business was leadership and the CEO of the company. So, that was my first induction into angel investing, which was in 2002. Read the full article »
This is the sixth interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. Corey Silva dropped into the angel universe by chance after being a serious rock n’ roll musician in his early days; he has written over 120 original songs. As fate would have it, he is now an assistant manager at River Valley Investors and a partner at Angel Catalyst, a management and consulting firm he runs with his brother. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Irina: Hi, Corey. So, River Valley Investors (RVI), where are they based?
Corey: The group is located in western Massachusetts, outside of Springfield. My brother, Paul Silva, is the manager of RVI and I’m the assistant manager. I live around two hours away from where they meet, in southeastern Massachusetts, so I have quite a bit of commuting to do when they have meetings. But the group is based in western Massachusetts, that’s where the majority of the membership is from, although they do have quite a few members from the Boston area who actually trek two hours to go to the meetings. Read the full article »
This is the fifth interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. Our guest today is Randy Williams, founder and CEO of Keiretsu Forum, a growing angel network that currently has 850 investors in 19 chapters around the world. The forum has made 265 investments since its inception in 2000. Read the full article »
This is the fourth interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. Today we are talking to Malvern D. Lusky, CPA, and individual angel who is also a part of the Houston Angel Network.
Irina: Hi, Malvern. You’re an individual angel, right? And also associated with the Houston Angel Network (HAN)?
Malvern: That’s correct. I did a little bit on my own before joining the network, and I’ve been a member of that network for five years now.
The Houston Angel Network is a nonprofit organization that provides its members a forum in which to efficiently evaluate promising early-stage investment opportunities. Its membership consists of active and SEC-accredited angel investors who share the goal of making informed, collaborative investments in promising early stage Texas-based companies. HAN was founded in late 2001 and is the largest and most active angel network in Texas. Since inception, our members have invested more than $27 million in 54 deals. Read the full article »
This is the third interview in our series on seed financing and angel investing. Today we are talking to Paul Olliver, cofounder and CEO of Wider Wake Networks, Inc. and Steve Stratz, Wider Wake spokesperson. Wider Wake is headquartered in New York City, its member network is global, its members think of themselves as a trans-Atlantic angel forum, and they invest predominantly in digital media advertising. Read the full article »
This is the second interview in my series of interviews with angel investors and angel groups. This time I talked to Robert (Bob) Aholt, a vice chairman of the Pasadena Angels based out of Los Angeles.
Irina: Hi Bob, tell us briefly about your personal background and about your group. Let’s start with your personal background.
Bob: I’m the vice chairman of the Pasadena Angels, the angel investing group that I do most of my personal investing through right now. I come out of a background around technology, biosciences, and life sciences. I originally had a consulting firm here in Los Angeles that focused on technology consulting and strategies. The company was called Systems Development. I was fortunate enough to be able to sell that back in the early 2000s. Then I moved to a company called Phase III Medical, which was a publicly traded company in New York, and I was the chief operating officer of that company. Phase III focused on providing capital to biotechnology and life sciences companies by investing in a revenue stream or royalty agreement that a company might already have. Read the full article »
