Seed Capital: Jim Jaffe, CEO, National Association Of Seed And Venture Funds (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Jim: There’re probably 600 or 700 federal laboratories, and as I said, their annual research budget is $150 billion. As part of that, there are a number of laws on the books that require the federal laboratories to transfer technology into the commercial, private sector. There are

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Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Heather: I probably look at all three of those three C’s, character, credit, and collateral, but from a slightly different angle in that I am most concerned with making sure that that management team is the right team to bring that business to success, and that I can

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Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What kind of companies do you prefer? Heather: We are industry agnostic. What that means is that we don’t really focus on a specific sector or a specific type of company. If you looked at our portfolio, you would see that we had a concentration of

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Seed Capital: Jim Jaffe, CEO, National Association Of Seed And Venture Funds (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Jim: So, as I was saying, “the valley of death” [for a technology startup company] is the place between, roughly, the $100,000 that you can raise on your own and maybe the $2.5 million or $3 million, which is the level at which a venture capital firm

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Seed Capital: Jim Jaffe, CEO, National Association Of Seed And Venture Funds (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the forty-fourth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Jim Jaffe, the CEO of the National Association of Seed and Venture Fund (NASVF). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania–based NASVF is a global non-profit with over 600 individual members in 43 states and four

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Garrett, Co-Founder And Managing Director, Crosscut Ventures (Part 11)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What else do entrepreneurs need to understand about venture funding? Brian: There are five- or ten-year time frames before you have success, so you have to really be aligned with your investor on the vision, what you hope to accomplish, what hurdles you’re going to see

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Kiki Tidwell, Board Member, Northwest Energy Angels (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you think entrepreneurs should take the lead and ask for help? Kiki: I’ll tell you one thing entrepreneurs should really do. Once they have investors who’re investing in their company, they should give them regularly scheduled updates no matter what.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Garrett, Co-Founder And Managing Director, Crosscut Ventures (Part 10)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What is your preferred type of investment? Brian: It’s preferred shares in a traditional equity financing. If we do a note, it’s usually a convertible piece of debt with a cap. Going back to that original comment, we don’t like our money being used to drive

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