Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: Let’s talk about seed funding. What is the CRV QuickStart program? George: Initially, we called the program QuickStart. We made about sixteen investments that were $250,000. We found that entrepreneurs liked it, but a bunch of angel investors did not like it because we priced it as a convertible note

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 5)

By guest author Irina Patterson Nova: Today, the world of angel investing is completely the Wild West. It’s extremely hard to find investors. It’s extremely hard to get them to give you money. And even when they do, it’s not very much. So, there’s a gap right now. Basically, the first one to three million

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson This is the twenty-fifth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to George Zachary, general partner of Charles River Ventures, one of the nation’s oldest early-stage venture capital firms. CRV invests in the data communications and software & services sectors and provides entrepreneurs with access to

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: What do you think a single most important thing that angels could do to increase their chances of success? Nova: I advise a bunch of entrepreneurs and help with some of their companies, and the biggest problem entrepreneurs have today with angel funding is actually getting angel funding because

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: How about a team? Do they have to have a complete team? Nova: No, they have to have the technical lead and the product lead. Irina: Is there any specific character trait you can identify? Nova: I’m usually looking for people who are on the technical side. They have

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: From all the sources, do you have an idea how many pitches you get a month? Nova: I would say it’s probably about five to ten a month. Irina: Out of those five to ten, how many deserve a closer look? Nova: Usually one or maybe two.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson This is the twenty-fourth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Nova Spivak, a serial entrepreneur, who is currently the co-founder an president of Live Matrix and an angel investor soon to be based in Los Angeles. Irina: Hi, Nova. Let’s start with with your

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Russ Fradin, The Bay Area (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson Irina: Have any of the companies that you invested in exited already? Russ: Yes, first of all I was an investor in Adify, which is nice. I was investor in Playdom, a social gaming company, that Disney just acquired. I am an investor in one more thing that should exit

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