Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ho Nam, General Partner, Altos Ventures (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ho: Certainly, dividends are one way, but you could also do shareholder buybacks. Public companies do this all the time. They do a stock buyback program if they think that their stock is relatively undervalued, or they think that’s a good use of capital. The board of

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you have any preferred investment types? What is it? Preferred shares? Brad: Yes, we always make equity investments and we almost always take preferred shares. Irina: Do you think about exit strategy when you invest? Brad: We don’t think about it.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ho Nam, General Partner, Altos Ventures (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ho: Somebody who comes in with a fantastic-looking resume will disappoint you many times. If we think we can work with somebody, we’ll err on the side of really trying to help that person. Even if they make mistakes and we’re learning on the jobs all of

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ho Nam, General Partner, Altos Ventures (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What is your current source of deal flow? Ho: Most deals we get come from our network. We have several thousand people working across our different portfolio companies, so the network has grown over time; entrepreneurs we’ve worked with in the past or people who have

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: And what about your equity share and your returns? Do you have any rules about those numbers? Brad: Again, it varies dramatically. We don’t have a specific rule. Our goal is to work with entrepreneurs to build as much value as possible. Irina: What stage of

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Brad: And then we look at the actual entrepreneurs behind the product, and we do that in concert. I don’t actually think you can really evaluate a product effectively without using it or having interactions with the entrepreneurs so, we tend to lump those two together.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ho Nam, General Partner, Altos Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the sixteenth interview in our series on seed financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Ho Nam, general partner at Altos Ventures, a first-stage venture capital firm, based in Menlo Park, Silicon Valley. Irina: Hi, Ho. Why don’t you start with your background? Ho: I

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How do you spend time with the entrepreneurs? Brad: They come to us and we go to them; we spend a lot of time together. I think it’s really us developing that relationship with them. We made an investment recently in a company called Sifteo, I’m

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