By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How long does it take for a company to receive funding from your group? Malvern: It usually takes from one to three months to get comfortable with the company and complete due diligence. Irina: And the people are very important, right? Malvern: Oh, absolutely. The people
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Approximately how many deals have you invested in so far? Malvern: The total, including the ones I’ve exited, would probably be about 12, maybe more. But that includes deals that I’ve already exited for one reason or another . . . or they didn’t work. Irina:
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold 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
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: So, what do you think is the most important thing that angel-backed founders should do to increase their chances of success? Paul: From our perspective, if Wider Wake, being an angel group, has backed a team of founders, the best thing they can do is engage
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Any interesting stories about the companies you invested in? Paul: Back to appssavvy, they’re really a case study deal for us. That’s exactly the way in which we like to work. Steve: appssavvy started out with an idea when Facebook opened its platform to third-party developers.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you invest in teams straight out of school, or do you require previous business experience? If only with experience, what level of experience do you require? Paul: We much prefer teams with experience, but that experience doesn’t need to be at a certain level of
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Is there anything your group does differently from others in valuing a company? Paul: As we’re all successful entrepreneurs ourselves, we’ve been on that side of the table. We understand motivation and what a poor capitalization structure can do to motivation. For example, just because an
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many investments have you made in the past 12 months? Paul: Four. It’s probably a reflection of the fact that we’re a group of individuals who invest together, not a fund. When we set it out from when we knew the numbers we were aiming