Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave Whorton, Founder, Tugboat Ventures (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What do you think in terms of returns?

Dave: Every company we get involved in, we’d like to believe has the potential to be worth $1 billion someday. The multiple over time is not important to us. What’s important is the scale of the venture and what it could be worth someday.

So, as you might imagine, with very early stage concepts, it may not be currently a one-step move for the company to become a really valuable company. That may require a couple of steps. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Lewis Hower, Executive Director, University Impact Fund (Part 10)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are your personal daily challenges?

Lewis: Personally, I’d love to help every organization that came through our door, and every single entrepreneur, and be able to provide them with, if not an introduction, at the very least resources of tools and readings they could use to help make them better.

Knowing that if I say, you know what, it just doesn’t fit with what we’re doing right now, but we can plug them into other opportunities, and they’re going to continue to make their organization as strong as it possibly can be – that’s a good start. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave Whorton, Founder, Tugboat Ventures (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: On average, how many pitches do you receive per month?

Dave: From 50 to 75.

Irina: And out of those, how many deserve a closer look?

Dave: Every year we typically make, per investing partner – there are two of us [another partner is Dafina Toncheva] – one investment where we go on the board of directors, and that is a Series A opportunity. We also look at lots of seed and concept opportunities as well as incubations, and we’ll make, per investing partner, two to three of those per year. And so, to get to that, we probably look deeply  at two, three, or four opportunities per month. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Lewis Hower, Executive Director, University Impact Fund (Part 9)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Lewis: We are co-investing alongside the existing funds that have been successful in doing this in this space, and we really do rely on them to be the drivers of agreeable terms and knowing what is best for the investment, which ultimately is best for our prospective outlook. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave Whorton, Founder, Tugboat Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirty-second interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Dave Whorton, the founder of Tugboat Ventures, an organization of investors who see themselves as not “venture capitalists” but rather as “mentor capitalists,” closer in spirit to the approach pioneered by Tom Perkins in the 1970s.  Based in Palo Alto, California, they prefer to invest in companies in the San Francisco Bay Area with a focus on consumer Internet, enterprise software-as-a-service, mobility, and the next generation of online advertising companies. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Lewis Hower, Executive Director, University Impact Fund (Part 8)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What other character traits are you looking for in an entrepreneur?

Lewis: I certainly look for somebody who possesses the fundamental, rudimentary business skills and also has the undeniable passion and commitment to the cause that they are trying to be a player in or whatever their stated mission may be.

I think in the impact space, the traditional and fundamental theories of entrepreneurship of iterating and supporting the entrepreneur sometimes get overlooked because people are focusing so much on the cause. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Dave McClure, Founder, 500 Startups (Part 9)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What do you think angels could do to improve the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem?

Dave: It seems the most important thing is providing small amounts of capital early on when companies are getting started and providing advice and support, either in business or product development or marketing.

Usually, it’s not the size of the check but the initial validation of the idea and some amount of capital to get started really is the role that the angel community plays for these companies. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Lewis Hower, Executive Director, University Impact Fund (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Any more thoughts on funding at different stages of business’ development?

Lewis: If we are looking at something that’s a little more established, such as something related to microfinance or SME funding, we will look to fund at the later stage when there is more volume and ability to go into that space.

It’s going to be based more on quality relationships with the different funds and folks whom we’re going to be co-investing with and less on saying, “We do only very early stage” or “We do only later stage types of situations.” We’ll certainly take a balanced portfolio approach to our fund, recognizing how the overall perspective looks. But we won’t have any rules that say we can’t do one thing or the other. >>>