Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Saad: Our office is based in San Francisco, but from an international perspective, what we’ve done is partner with a couple of other venture funds that we trusted in different regions.

For instance, we were an LP (limited partner) in a fund in Europe called Hasso Plattner Ventures, which is based out of Berlin and invests across Europe. Hasso Plattner, by the way, was the founder of SAP. So, we partnered with them when we looked at companies in Europe.

We’re also an investor in a fund called Indo-US Ventures in India. Similarly, those are our eyes and ears in India. We’ve partnered with them on things that we liked to look at in that part of the world.

Almost all of our portfolio companies, frankly, have some part of their operations overseas, whether it’s in China, in Europe, Eastern Europe, and in some cases, South America. Even for the companies that are headquartered here, we leverage global talent and global resources.

Irina: What is your source of deal flow?

Saad: My best source of deal flow is other entrepreneurs – certainly entrepreneurs that we’ve already invested in. Their opinions mean a lot to us because we have a lot vested in them and have a lot of trust in what they think.

So, I think a lot of our deal flow actually ends up coming from entrepreneurs who we’ve invested in or entrepreneurs who we know, who I’ve spent a lot of time with.

[They send us] the things that they find exciting, and I find that they hear about things long before the rest of the community does. People who are hustling , I think, are very good at recognizing other people who are also hustling. That’s one of the areas.

In addition to that, we certainly get deal flow from other venture investors, from people we work with on the legal side, our service providers, accounting staff.

I actually have a little bit of a different network, too, in that in addition to my day job at CMEA, I helped start an angel network Film Angels that invests in independent film. From a media perspective, a lot of my deal flow actually comes from people who come from that side, the visual media side, the film side, the “content” side.

And, again, it’s really interesting when you start to get a confluence of people from different regions, from different industries, who are sending you stuff. I think you get to triangulate in a way that most people don’t.

Irina: Who is managing Film Angels?

Saad: There’s a guy who runs it full time. His name is Thomas Trenker, and he’s the founder. I helped start it with him. I’m a member, and I’ve been hosting and contributing there for the last five plus years since we started it.

We get deal flow from Hollywood and filmmakers and content producers and writers, which is I think is a little bit different from a lot of other stuff.

Irina: Where is it based?

Saad: It’s based in Silicon Valley. There are actually Film Angels chapters that are opening up in different parts of the country. We have a chapter in New York City. We have chapters in a couple of other places.

To round out your question, between these two angel networks and the places that I’ve worked in the past, IBM, Disney, we get a lot of deal flow from people who I’ve worked with over the years and from the garage network as well.

We, like I said, had a footprint in more than 100 portfolio companies during the first stage, you know, Internet 1.0 and beyond. I think a lot of the entrepreneurs we’ve invested in have been Valley veterans, and they continue to send stuff our way.

Irina: From all the sources, how many pitches do you receive per month?

Saad: A lot. I probably get pitched, on average, at least, once a day if not more than that. So, over the course of any month, I’m probably meeting with 30 to 60 entrepreneurs, maybe more than that.

I spend a lot of my day, every day, meeting with entrepreneurs. That, obviously, is stuff that’s been referred to me that I think is interesting enough to take a look at. The funnel from there is significantly bigger in terms of what actually makes the cut.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital
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