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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Do you invest in teams straight out of school, or do you require previous business experience?

Nicola: One of the great reasons to work with the Band of Angels at large is the network we bring to the table. It is not just the ability to inject money and sort of walk away and hope for the best; it is having access to some of the most successful angel investors in the United States, who are part of our group. And these are guys who are hungrily and actively looking to make a difference in the investments that they personally adhere to, so at the Band of Angels we have over 120 seasoned senior executives with very nice Rolodexes who suddenly have the ability to open doors for startups that might otherwise not be able to get those first marquee customers. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: And what type of experience do you require from the founders?

Nicola: We don’t necessarily expect CEOs, but it is great when they have good domain knowledge, so it is not uncommon or unlikely that we would like to see some VP-level people who are building out their first company idea. We want to help people to become serial entrepreneurs, but we also recognize that in Silicon Valley there is a little bit missing as far the support for that first-time founder. And we’d like to try to bridge that gap with the Acorn Fund. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: What are your current sources of deal flow?

Nicola: I should say that when the Acorn Fund was created, we recognized that a great deal of education would need to be done for our friends and partners. The reason for that is so many entrepreneurs are used to having to pitch based on the fact they were told that they must have a billion-dollar market opportunity. But we believe that there are tremendous opportunities for products and features that may have only a $50 million or a $100 million real market opportunity, that a company might be very successful [in such a market] and that it might be very right for a small fund like ours to participate. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nicola Corzine, Band of Angels Acorn Fund (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

I recently talked with Nicola Corzine, deal manager and partner at the Band of Angels, Silicon Valley’s oldest seed funding organization. The Band of Angels is, I should say, a passionate and dedicated group of more than 120 former and current high-tech executives who are interested in investing their time and money into new, cutting-edge, startup companies. They have seeded over 200 companies with more than forty profitable M&A exits and nine Nasdaq IPOs. >>>

Entrepreneurship Education: Why Do Business Incubators Fail?

While my previous post on entrepreneurship education, Bootstrapping at B-Schools is still generating hot discussion, I would like to pose another important discussion topic: Why do business incubators fail?

Those among my readers who have perspective and analysis to offer on the subject, please feel free to jump right in.

[Please note that since this discussion started here on the blog in 2010, we have launched the One Million by One Million global initiative, and for incubators looking for a viable business model, you are very welcome to reach out to us to become a partner of our program.]

My New Year’s Resolution

I wish you all a happy 2010, dear readers!

I was reflecting back on 2009, and thinking what would be a good synthesis of the work I have been doing, and how I might succinctly summarize a New Year’s resolution for myself. Here is what I have come up with: >>>