Irina: How do you manage your time? Jason: It’s fluid. If you’re late in diligence on a substantial investment, you’re going to spend an inordinate amount of time working on that.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What are the usual exit strategies with your portfolio companies? Jason: Acquisition or IPO. It’s no different from others. We do our best to understand who the strategics are and get to know them within the sectors we invest in. Irina: Do you have an idea
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Are there any other character traits besides leadership that you think are important for entrepreneurs? Jason: I don’t know how to put it, but a nose for making money. I guess what I love is a quantitative orientation with brand sensibility on top of it. It’s
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Jason: For the seed investment, there’s a sliding scale in that the better we think the entrepreneur is, the less validation we need in terms of user traction and business model traction. In other words, for us to back a PowerPoint, we have to think the person
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: How many entrepreneurs did you actually incubate? Jason: In the past 18 months, we’ve funded two PowerPoint presentations, roughly, where there was a great entrepreneur with an idea, but that was it. That’s a pace we’re comfortable with. We might accelerate. Irina: So, they came in
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the fifty-first interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Jason Stoffer, principal at Maveron, a venture fund founded in 1998 by Howard Schultz, the founder and CEO of Starbucks, and Dan Levitan, the banker who took Starbucks public in 1991.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you have any target returns on investments? Andy: Yes, we do have targets. We look at it from a portfolio approach, but generally speaking, we tell people that we’re looking for a 20% IRR.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What kind of businesses do you prefer? Andy: Think of revenue loan as growth capital for small to medium-sized businesses. The demand for that growth capital is really high. There aren’t many sources of growth capital other than traditional venture capital, sometimes angels. So, there’s a