Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Ventures (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Mike: [With Dogpatch Labs], the idea is for the entrepreneurial community to be engaged and see this as both a place and a group of people to engage with across a variety of different means. The benefit to us is not ownership in the company necessarily. It’s really getting to know this whole new generation of entrepreneurs. The bread and butter, the lifeblood of our business, is people flow much more than deal flow. The deal flow comes from great people. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Eric Pozzo, Fund Manager, Oregon Angel Fund (Part 6)

Irina: What percentage of equity do you usually seek?

Eric: I think at the low end we’ve been in the 5% to 8% [range]. But I’d say our typical equity percentage would be in the 15% range, you know 12% to 20%.

Irina: Do you think in terms of the return that you would like?

Eric: Yes. We like to see conceivable exits in the 10x range, five to seven years out. And conceivable is the operative word because nothing ever happens according to plan. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Ventures (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Mike: We do quite a bit of seed investing. We’ve been doing seed investing since Polaris was started.

Irina: When was Polaris founded?

Mike: It was founded in 1995. That’s when they started raising the first fund, and they started investing in 1996.

Irina: What is your specific role?

Mike: I’m a general partner. There are a handful of us who are partners and we all do the full gamut, you know, investing, board work, firm management, the range of VC activities. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-seventh interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Mike Hirshland, General Partner at Polaris Ventures. The firm invests in seed, first round, and early stage technology and life science businesses. Headquartered in Boston, it has currently over $3 billion under management and investments in more than 100 companies, primarily in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and New York. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Eric Pozzo, Fund Manager, Oregon Angel Fund (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Eric: In our last financing, we, the Oregon Angels Fund, put in $650,000; there was another $440,000 that came in from just our investors who are within our group. That was a record but typically, one of our investments is followed by a $100,000 to $200,000 of side-by-side investments from people within our investment pool. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Eric Pozzo, Fund Manager, Oregon Angel Fund (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What is your educational background?

Eric: I have a bachelor’s of science from Brown University. I sold scientific instrumentation for number of years out of college, and then I went back to Dartmouth for an MBA. I graduated in 1980 and came out to work for Intel as a financial analyst.

I started at a company in 1982 when I was – I don’t know – 29 years old and ran that for seven or eight years. We enjoyed a modest exit, and I’ve just been involved in helping to manage or start little companies ever since. And moved over to this side of the table about three years ago. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Venktesh Shukla, Chair, TiE Angels (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: In your work as an angel investor, what are your daily challenges?

Venktesh: Well, there’s one company that I really like, and they have a technology which they claim is breakthrough. In concept on paper it looks great, but all the people and all the big companies that are target customers are saying, “Yeah, the value proposition is good. Yeah, this makes sense, but unless I use it, I don’t know if I’ll buy this.” >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Eric Pozzo, Fund Manager, Oregon Angel Fund (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Eric: We start each monthly meeting with an hour discussion of the 8 to 10 applicants, and everyone has a little anonymous voting machine and we vote on which two we want to present at our next meeting.

Once we’ve selected the two to present – and there’s usually a third and a fourth pretty close in the running – we form due diligence teams around each of these companies. So, people in the room raise their hand saying, “ I’d like to learn more about this software company or this wave energy company.” We also see if someone from the group wants to lead the effort.

If not, I personally lead it. Before the company presents, which is about a month later, we have at least one meeting with the company. And in some cases, if we’re really excited, we have many, many meetings and drive the process quite far down the road. >>>