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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Geoff Ralston, Silicon Valley (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What is your criterion for market size?

Geoff: There are exceptions to this, but I tend to only want to invest in startups that have significant or large upsides. I try to avoid putting fixed numbers on that other than I have it in my mind. If I can’t see a path to a $100 million in revenue, it doesn’t seem so interesting. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Geoff Ralston, Silicon Valley (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: From all your sources, how many pitches do you receive a month, approximately?

Geoff: It’s kind of hard to say because I’ve only just cranked this thing up again. For a while, I was very involved with Y Combinator, so it was kind of dominating [my time], so I don’t know.

How many different deals do I see per month? I would say it’s almost as many as I want. I think I get more than I can handle. I guess probably right now what I see is three or four deals, maybe five deals a week. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Geoff Ralston, Silicon Valley (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-second interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Geoff Ralston, a Silicon Valley angel investor and serial entrepreneur who started and ran a number of companies and held senior positions at Yahoo! after one of his companies, RocketMail, was acquired. >>>

Seed Capital From The Government: SBA’s Sean Greene (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Sramana: Let me ask you a specific question along those lines as a follow-up about education. Education is an area where we’re seeing a lot of interest among entrepreneurs. It’s clear that education is a big problem that needs to be solved by a variety of people. Does the Department of Education fall into this world? Is there any interaction between the SBA and the Department of Education? >>>

Seed Capital From The Government: SBA’s Sean Greene (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Sramana: What other programs are you thinking about or incubating within your charter that are going to help this ecosystem that we work with and you work with?

Sean: The SBIC program, again, it is a fund of funds. For the most part, it’s later stage capital, still an incredibly important part of high-growth entrepreneurship. As it relates to earlier stage, we’re in the process of launching a targeted program in the clean tech space that would provide matching funds to funds that are focusing on early-stage investment in clean tech. >>>

Seed Capital From The Government: SBA’s Sean Greene (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Sramana: I think the DOE [angle] is very straightforward because the energy agenda is very present. Clean tech is an active field of entrepreneurship right now, so we understand the DOE very well, and we understand the synergy between the clean tech community and the DOE. >>>

Seed Capital From The Government: SBA’s Sean Greene (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Sean: Last year, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) put $2.5 billion dollars in the hands of small-business [owners] who [have] innovative technology companies. And just as a point of reference, last year the entire venture industry put in only $1.7 billion, in terms of seed stage financing. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Larry Chaityn, Keiretsu Forum, New York Tri-State Chapters President (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Larry: Some of other things that we have looked at are mobile technology and that weaves itself into media. So, it’s mobile media. We’ve looked at electronic coupons and location-based services. We look at what is the business problem that you are trying to solve as a company for your customers. >>>