Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Saad: Our office is based in San Francisco, but from an international perspective, what we’ve done is partner with a couple of other venture funds that we trusted in different regions.

For instance, we were an LP (limited partner) in a fund in Europe called Hasso Plattner Ventures, which is based out of Berlin and invests across Europe. Hasso Plattner, by the way, was the founder of SAP. So, we partnered with them when we looked at companies in Europe. >>>

Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Heather: When we hold on to an investment – and this is something that the venture capital industry is really getting its head around today – for a very long time, we really need that multiple to be very high at the exit in order to make a risk appropriate return on the invested dollars.

So, I think our guys are very focused on trying to figure out what it’s going take to get those businesses successful, to a place where they can exit in the least amount of time possible, along with what the entrepreneur wants as well. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Saad Khan, Partner, CMEA Capital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the forty-sixth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Saad Khan, partner at CMEA Capital, a San Francisco–based venture firm. His focus is seed investing in early stage tech entrepreneurs.

Irina: Hi, Saad. Why don’t you briefly start with your background.

Saad: I went to Stanford, and I studied symbolic systems, which is a cross between linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, and philosophy. So, things like computer interaction and artificial intelligence, and any kind of problem that deals with mapping machines onto the human mind and vice versa. >>>

Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Heather: For the market size, there’s no real minimum because minimums are going to depend on whether the success of the business is based on traction and customer leads and hits or whether the success of the business is based on profitability. That affects what your minimum market size needs to be. >>>

Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you charge entrepreneurs a fee for mentoring them?

Heather: No. We don’t charge for entrepreneurs to be mentored. We do struggle. Just like everyone, we have limited bandwidth, so we highly encourage people to get involved with multiple mentors, even if you only get 30 minutes with some of the top people in your industry or who really understand the business model that you’re trying to execute. >>>

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. >>>

Working Capital (Debt) Financing For Entrepreneurs: Heather Onstott, Director Of Small Business, LaunchCapital (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Heather: I probably look at all three of those three C’s, character, credit, and collateral, but from a slightly different angle in that I am most concerned with making sure that that management team is the right team to bring that business to success, and that I can really get behind the assumptions that are made in the financial projections. That gets to all the basics of market sizing and timing for customer traction and those kinds of things.

I probably dive a bit deeper, and because I have that equity piece, I’m willing to be a little bit more flexible in the repayment structure. >>>