Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Saad: Almost all of the investments I have made have been before the companies had ideas for what they wanted to do. Again, it comes back to the same point. Exceptional people figure out the right markets to go after and the right technologies to build, and

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Saad: I spend a significant portion of my life meeting with entrepreneurs either one at a time or, in some cases, we’re out there a lot judging business plan competitions and meeting people at conferences and events. So, in some cases, we’re meeting many more than one

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Saad: Our office is based in San Francisco, but from an international perspective, what we’ve done is partner with a couple of other venture funds that we trusted in different regions. For instance, we were an LP (limited partner) in a fund in Europe called Hasso Plattner

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the forty-sixth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Saad Khan, partner at CMEA Capital, a San Francisco–based venture firm. His focus is seed investing in early stage tech entrepreneurs. Irina: Hi, Saad. Why don’t you briefly start with your

Read Full Article »

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

Read Full Article »

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

Read Full Article »

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Kiki Tidwell, Board Member, Northwest Energy Angels (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Kiki: We try to direct people if we know that there’s a particular grant opening, but, generally, we wouldn’t be the best source for being the repository of all that information. Irina: What is the best way to learn about cleantech grants? Kiki: I would go to

Read Full Article »