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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: So, you run the educational workshops for entrepreneurs as part of your work for New York Angels?

Brian: Yes. We started a New York Angels meet-up group in New York City, and we’ll have ongoing educational workshops.

Irina: How often?

Brian: New York City is a complicated place, so the number of activities that take place can be overwhelming to anyone.

Some of the workshops are ones we do ourselves, which we can control. We have Wilson Sonsini, one of the leading law firms in the space, as our sponsor and partner. They do ongoing workshops, so we collaborate with them on term sheets, design, and developments. We invite our angels and entrepreneurs to those. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What is your source of deal flow?

Brian: A good portion of the deals come from the angels themselves because of their contacts. We are on the Angelsoft platform, so there is an enormous amount of deal flow that comes through them as well.

New York City is a cauldron that’s just bubbling over like I’ve never seen before. Entrepreneurs, startups, whatever you want to call them, kids are coming here in droves from Silicon Valley and all over the world. There’s no lack of deal flow from either the investing angels or just from the generic platform, from Angelsoft. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Brian: At the age of about 28 or 29, I ran into a guy by the name of Regis McKenna, whom many people to this day don’t know. Regis, who wrote The Regis Touch, was the first real marketing strategist in Silicon Valley.

He announced Apple computer, he announced Intel and became their counsel. He asked me why no one was doing that on the East Coast.

So, in 1978, I left the publishing business and started the first major science and technology PR strategy agency in the United States. I built that into one of the largest agencies – hundreds and hundreds of employees around the world. I handled the IBM Corporation – all the divisions, 52 of them – for more than 14 years.

I introduced IBM to the Internet space. At the same time, I handled Sony and did all of Sony Corporation’s PR strategy for more than a decade. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the forty-seventh interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Brian Cohen, vice chairman of New York Angels. The group offers early stage capital in the range of $250,000 to $750,000. Since 1997, the group and members of their predecessor group have invested over $28 million in more than 65 companies.

Irina: Hi, Brian. Why don’t you start with your background and how you arrived at this point?

Brian: I guess, to some extent, if I wax a bit poetic here, I grew up in Brooklyn, and there’s an attitude, perhaps to some degree, about people who grow up in Brooklyn and New York City of being a bit more aggressive, being more opportunistic. When you grow up in Brooklyn, there’s a sense of wanting to get out of Brooklyn. The old history of Brooklyn is made up of a lot of very interesting people who like to create things. Perhaps there’s a bit of that Brooklyn DNA in me. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What is your average investment size?

Saad: I think it’s between $250,000 and $500,000.

Irina: Do you do follow-on investments?

Saad: We have. We have some companies that don’t actually need any more money, as well.

Irina: How long does it take for entrepreneurs to receive money from you?

Saad: From a seed perspective, it’s very quick. I run all of our seed investing. Typically, the companies meet with me, and if we’re excited about them, usually I’ll introduce them to my partners on the technology team, which has another four people. So, it’s a matter of days if not a couple of weeks. >>>

Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 8)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Heather: It’s interesting, while I was up in Portland, I did meet with a couple of entrepreneurs who are interested in the venture side. So, since I was there, I just had the meeting. That happens a lot. You know, the venture guys will find something that really belongs in the small business group, or I find something that really belongs in the venture group. >>>

Seed Capital: Jim Jaffe, CEO, National Association Of Seed And Venture Funds (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Where do you think entrepreneurs could acquire business skills for building and developing their companies?

Jim: There are lots of organizations. I’m in the Philadelphia area, and the purpose of many organizations here, universities and incubators that run entrepreneurship courses, is to try to help people figure out that it’s not so much about the technology as it is about the business.

In other words, you may have the world’s most wonderful, exciting technology, but unless you have a sense of how to market it, how to scale it, how to get cash flow, chances are you aren’t going to be successful in raising any money at all. >>>

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 laws that have been around for 20-odd years.

So, what happens is that a federal laboratory may develop a technology for itself, its own purpose, but they have tech transfer officers whose job it is to say, “Now, wait a minute. Where is the place that this might be able to go into the marketplace?” What we’re trying to do is be a catalyst in some federal laboratories to assist in that process. >>>