Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Raymond Chan, Tech Coast Angels (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Let me ask you, are there any charges to entrepreneurs at any stage as they are going through the process of presenting to TCA?

Ray: No, we don’t believe in charging because we see them as our customers; they are our partners. I don’t think its right to charge our customers a fee to work with us. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Raymond Chan, Tech Coast Angels (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: What are your current sources of deal flow?

Ray: It’s an interesting question. About three months ago we actually redid our website, making it more entrepreneur-friendly, so that people can just apply with a very simple application. On top of that, I designed a new marketing program.

In the past year we have been doing a lot of Tech Coast Angels press release announcements about our funding and our performance, so that have been the biggest source of our deal flow. When people look for funding, they come across us through Google, so that has been the major deal source in the past year. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dick Reeves, Executive Director, Huntsville Angel Network (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many pitches do you receive per month, on average?

Dick: In a month, I’ll hear from 12–15 capital seekers.

Irina: Out of those 12–15, how many deserve a closer look?

Dick: One or two.

Irina: What would be your next step of engagement with them?

Dick: We’ll get some initial information from them in terms of an executive summary, non-confidential information, a phone call where we can explore a little bit. The telephone call eliminates eight or ten of the typical twelve that I’ll hear from in a month. >>>

Seed Capital from Angel Investors: Dick Reeves, Executive Director, Huntsville Angel Network (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold.

This is the twenty-seventh interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Dick Reeves, executive director of Huntsville Angel Network that services entrepreneurs in and around Huntsville, Alabama, where it’s based.

Irina: Hi, Dick. Why don’t we start with you telling me a little bit about your background and how you became an angel investor?

Dick: Well, I am a serial entrepreneur, a technical entrepreneur. I’ve done a number of businesses in our town over the past 35 years and raised angel capital from individual, random angels for three of those businesses. >>>

Seed Capital from Angel Investors: Raymond Chan, Tech Coast Angels (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-sixth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Raymond Chan, a member of Tech Coast Angels. TCA has over 260  members and provides funding and guidance to early-stage, high-growth companies in Southern California.

Irina: Hi, Ray. Let’s start with your personal background.

Ray: I have been an angel investor for the past twenty-some years. I’ve been investing into startups — mostly in communications and consumer Internet. I joined Tech Coast Angels about three and a half years ago. Since then I have been involved with a group and made several investments over the past few years, and on top of that I’m on the board of directors of TCA. I’m also in charge of the marketing and PR, and all of our entrepreneur programs for the organization. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: What is your biggest investment success to date?

George: I am one of the three original investors on Twitter; I’m sure that will work out well. And I’m an investor in a company called Yammer, which is becoming the Facebook of enterprise and which is going to be showing their next version of their product and having a major launch at the TechCrunch conference in ten days.

I’m so excited about what Yammer’s doing. Yammer is already big and probably going to be the most important enterprise SaaS company. Up until these companies, my biggest successes were in being a lead investor in Critical Path. I invested about $5 million and returned about $320 million in gains. And in a company called Shutterfly where I was the co-investor and I was the co-founder, I did a total investment of about $8 million and returned about — I have to do the math here at the back of my head — about $150 million in gains. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Do you think in terms of total available market, like a certain number?

George: At the seed stage, we are just thinking of a big picture – will the innovation of this create brand new behaviors, have an impact, or change an industry or market? And that’s qualitative. At the first venture round where we’re investing millions of dollars, we do do a market analysis, and we look for markets that can support a billion dollars. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Let’s talk about seed funding. What is the CRV QuickStart program?

George: Initially, we called the program QuickStart. We made about sixteen investments that were $250,000. We found that entrepreneurs liked it, but a bunch of angel investors did not like it because we priced it as a convertible note without any warrants or without any pricing or evaluation attached to it. And that irritated some angels who basically thought it underpriced them.

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