Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Do you serve on the boards of any of the companies you invested in? Christina: No, I don’t. I do serve on some advisory boards, but those aren’t the companies that I have invested in. Irina: What do you think entrepreneurs could do better? Christina: Going

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Michael Gruber, Founder and Managing Director, Cornerstone Angels (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Will your new Independence Equity fund be making seed investments? Michael: It will be the first institution round, so typically it will be series A and series B type investments. Depending on how large the fund gets to be down the road, the size of investments

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Michael Gruber, Founder and Managing Director, Cornerstone Angels (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: Could you give us a timeline of your career up to this point? Michael: I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. I studied international relations and economics. It was basically an East Asian studies within the international relations. I studied Japanese, and I spoke

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What do you look for in the people? I see you’re very young yourself.  What kind of experience do you look for in the people? Christina: For two of the companies I’ve invested in, the founders have been very young. I think both of them were

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Michael Gruber, Founder and Managing Director, Cornerstone Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the thirty-ninth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking Michael Gruber, founder and managing director of Cornerstone Angels, a Chicago-based group of angels that seeks to provide financial capital and mentorship to early-stage companies in the greater Midwest.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: When you see a promising pitch, what is your next step? Christina: It’s two ways. If I just read about something that I like, or hear from somebody, I’ll usually reach out to [the entrepreneur], and say, “Hey, I’m really interested. Let’s sit down and grab

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Ventures (Part 9)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: You were talking about public debate about angels versus VCs, throughout the blogosphere and how in some instances it has gotten pretty colorful. Mike: Yes, it doesn’t make sense to be antagonizing an entire category of investors that you’re going to need to be partnering with.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold This is the thirty-eighth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Christina Brodbeck, a Silicon Valley angel investor and the co-founder of a soon-to-be-launched startup called TheIceBreak. Christina was part of the YouTube founding team. She designed YouTube’s first user interface and

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