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.

Irina: What are the fees for entrepreneurs?

Mike: It depends. We have three different labs, in San Francisco, in Boston, and in New York City. It’s whatever our cost is across the three geographies. It varies on a per month, per desk basis. If it costs us $275 a month per desk in one of the areas, then that’s what we charge the entrepreneurs. If it costs us $500 per desk per month, then that’s what we charge.

Irina: Do you give any scholarships?

Mike: Yeah. It turns about that about half of the residents in the labs are on scholarships. We’re actually interested in trying to expand that to make it available to more. We’re in the process of pursuing some different means of being able to do that. I’m pretty hopeful that that’s something we’ll be able to do over time.

Irina: How many entrepreneurs do you have in those labs?

Mike: Across the three different labs, we have about 150 entrepreneurs all working on something different.

Irina: Do you provide any mentorship, any kind of guidance?

Mike: We do to some extent. I don’t overemphasize that piece of it. The dynamic we’re trying to set up is not that we are in an advisory and supervisory role but it’s really for the entrepreneurs, by the entrepreneurs.

We want them to feel like it’s their place, their community. We spend a lot of time there. We do our meetings and calls and stuff in the labs. But we try not to set up as the Polaris guys are senior advisors and the entrepreneurs are junior advisees. That’s not the dynamic we’re trying to establish.

Irina: You conduct your general, normal business there?

Mike: Yes. Every once in a while the entrepreneurs will come to us and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about financing; can I chat with you guys?” or “Can I bounce some product ideas off you?” We absolutely do that, and we invite speakers in to provide some interesting content. But it’s not a formal training/advising thing.

Y Combinator and Tech Stars, for example, are different. They’re great at what they do; we just have a slightly different model.

Coming back to deal flow, one of things that has been successful is we have had the opportunity to back eight – I think it’s eight – companies out of Dogpatch, so far. That’s been fantastic. Again, it’s a very, very small number of the total teams that have been through there. That’s not the primary objective but it has been a good source of deal flow.

Irina: How long has Dogpatch been in operation?

Mike: It’s been about a year and a half.

Irina: Where did the name come from?

Mike: When we left the building in Potrero, we moved to another spot, in the Dogpatch area of San Francisco. That’s when we called it the Dogpatch Labs. Then we decided the place and the space weren’t quite right, so we moved it, but we kept the name.

Irina: Where does the name Polaris come from?

Mike: Polaris comes from the North Star. The founders of Polaris had an approach to investing that they had followed over the years which was multi-stage, multi-sector diversification, and they referred to that as their North Star of investing. So, that’s what they named it for.

Irina: What is the best way for entrepreneurs to reach you?

Mike: Well, that’s a great question. It’s a little bit hard to answer. I’m going to do my best just to be really honest and blunt about it. A blind, unsolicited phone call or e-mail tends not to work simply because we get so many of those; it’s very hard to have the time to go through all of them and figure out which ones are worth meeting.

So, inevitably, what ends up happening is people get introduced to us. An entrepreneur or an investor or service provider or lawyer or accountant or fill in the blank, will call us up and say, “Hey, there’s someone who I think you should meet.” My advice would be to figure out how to connect to us through somebody we already know. A great way is a company in Dogpatch. There are lots and lots of those. They’re all on the Dogpatch website.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Hirshland, General Partner, Polaris Ventures
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