Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Brian: They say in the angel business, the real problem companies are the ones that keep existing. They don’t go up; they don’t go down. They just stay in place.

That’s why it’s so important to look for companies that do have the opportunity for scalability. But there’s no real way to answer the question about how long an exit takes for us. It’s pretty much how the company performs.

If we invest wisely, as we do – as we learn to do – we see where the exit could be at the day of the investment. That might makes the exit more clear as an opportunity, but it doesn’t necessarily make the timing any more predictable. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brian Cohen, Vice Chairman, New York Angels (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: In the past 12 months, how many new investments has New York Angels made?

Brian: I’m going to say probably eight, which I hear is pretty good during a recession, and maybe five or six add-on investments.

Irina: Can entrepreneurs who are not based in New York pitch to your group?

Brian: Yes, but they would have to come to New York. We really want to meet them, we have to see them. They don’t have to be [based in New York]. It’s nice if they are, but if they’re not, that’s OK, too. >>>

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 12)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Saad: The biggest challenge that I see from a venture perspective for me, personally, is how do you scale yourself and your time? Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week. I can tell you that if I wanted to allocate every single minute of every single one of those days, I would have more than enough things to do, more than enough people whom I could be trying to help, and more places I want to be. That’s the biggest thing that I see. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 11)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Saad: Just because a venture guy doesn’t invest in something or rejects something doesn’t make it a bad company. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of companies that have been created in the world were not venture backed and have been super successful.

Having said that, one of the things that I would say for any entrepreneurs who want to raise funding and thinks that they qualify based on the business they are building, the most important thing they can do is hire people who are better than yourself. >>>