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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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 5)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Nova: Today, the world of angel investing is completely the Wild West. It’s extremely hard to find investors. It’s extremely hard to get them to give you money. And even when they do, it’s not very much. So, there’s a gap right now. Basically, the first one to three million dollars that a company needs is extremely hard to raise. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-fifth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to George Zachary, general partner of Charles River Ventures, one of the nation’s oldest early-stage venture capital firms.

CRV invests in the data communications and software & services sectors and provides entrepreneurs with access to a combination of financial backing, start-up operations expertise, and strategic business services. Over the past ten years, CRV’s funds have been ranked among the industry’s top performers. George’s personal focus is consumer Internet. He is based in Menlo Park, California. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: What do you think a single most important thing that angels could do to increase their chances of success?

Nova: I advise a bunch of entrepreneurs and help with some of their companies, and the biggest problem entrepreneurs have today with angel funding is actually getting angel funding because it’s so inefficient.

There’s a lot of angels, but it’s hard to meet them. It’s hard in any kind of of organized way to raise money from angels, and it’s inefficient. >>>