Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Jason Stoffer, Principal at Maveron (Part 3)

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 is great, and she has to have an excellent track record. For us to back something that has good, early traction, those are the levers. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Jason Stoffer, Principal at Maveron (Part 2)

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 and worked in your offices?

Jason: One did; one did not.

Irina: How many pitches, approximately, do you get per month from all your sources?

Jason: I have no idea. For me, within education, it’s a relatively small sector from a venture investment perspective.

So, within the consumer side, the way I like to think of it is, we want to see the vast majority of great entrepreneurs who are creating great companies in that sector. Within Web-enabled consumer services, likewise. For us, it’s not a question of how many pitches we see but how many quality entrepreneurs we’re talking to. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Jason Stoffer, Principal at Maveron (Part 1)

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. (The name “Maveron” was coined from the words “maverick” and “vision.”)

With offices in Seattle and San Francisco, Maveron manages $750 million in capital and invests only in consumer-facing business, mainly in Web-enabled consumer services, education, and health and wellness. >>>

An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Could you tell us more about Kauffman’s program FastTrac?

Marianne: FastTrac  has a series of different courses, also taught at lots and lots of different local locations and, I believe, on the Web, on everything from starting a business to how to grow your business with lots of different aspects in there. >>>

An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Marianne: We are focused on helping angel groups grow and do things that are important to their stability and general operations. So, we’ve put together, I think, a lot of good referral services and places for good information.

We have partnered with Angelsoft to make sure that they have free access to their platform that helps them in the management of their organizations. >>>

An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How do you fund your organization’s work?

Marianne: It comes from a combination of membership dues, events and sponsorships. On the ACEF side, it’s a combination of a series of seminars and workshops that we do all over the country and grants from the Kauffman Foundation, as well as sponsorships.

Irina: What do you do day to day?

Marianne: There are no two days that are the same, but a lot of it is spent making sure we’re developing programming that has value to our members. So, that’s anything from helping put together a couple conferences per year to representing our members in Washington, D.C., watching what’s going on in Congress and in the administration, regulatory agencies, that kind of thing. Also, just working for ACEF, thinking through our educational programming and how we finance it. >>>

An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the fiftieth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Marianne Hudson, executive director of the Angel Capital Association.

Overland Park, Kansas-based ACA is is a non-profit trade association. It counts among its members more than 150 angel groups throughout the United States and Canada that represent more than 6,500 angels. The mission of ACA is to support the growth, financial stability, and investment success of member angel groups.

It provides professional development, best practices, networking, and collaboration opportunities for angel investors who belong to member angel groups. The organization also serves as the public policy voice of the angel community and is focused on advancing state and federal policies that support and promote angel investing. >>>

An Interview With David Monkman, President And CEO, National Business Incubation Association (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How else do you work with your partners?

David: Like any trade association, we depend on partners to help sponsor NBIA and our members. Typically, what we do is we have a level-based sponsorship model. For certain advertising rates, we will promote a partner’s product to our members.

For higher levels of sponsorship, there would be more advertising channels employed and a greater number of impressions sought. So, for example, the cost per impression for a $5,000 sponsorship would be close to 30,000 impressions.

A $50,000 sponsorship, just to give you a sense of how large the range can be, would involve more than 1 million impressions. So, we try to be an advertising partner for vendors that want to provide services to incubator managers or their clients. >>>