1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Nova Spivak, West Coast (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-fourth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Nova Spivak, a serial entrepreneur, who is currently the co-founder an president of Live Matrix and an angel investor soon to be based in Los Angeles.

Irina: Hi, Nova. Let’s start with with your background.

Nova: I started EarthWeb in 1994 with some co-founders, and it went public in 1998 and later became Dice.com – that’s the current name of the company.

Then I helped to co-found and build nVention Convergence Ventures, an in-house intellectual property incubator of SRI International and Sarnoff Laboratories, and after that I started my own incubator, called Lucid Ventures in in 2001. Through that, in 2008 I started Twain.com, a semantic Web-based tool for information storage, authoring, and discovery, which was recently bought by Paul Allen-backed semantic Web startup Evri.com. Now Live Matrix, which is my new startup, is my main focus. And since then I’ve done also a quite a bit of angel investing in very early stage companies.

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Featured Videos

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Russ Fradin, The Bay Area (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-third interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Russ Fradin, a serial entrepreneur, who is currently the cofounder and president of Adify and angel investor in the Bay Area. >>>

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 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-first interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. Irina is talking to Sean Greene, associate administrator for investment and special advisor for innovation at the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to assist and protect the interests of small businesses. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Larry Chaityn, Keiretsu Forum, New York Tri-State Chapters President (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twentieth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Larry Chaityn, president of New York Tri-State Chapters, the Keiretsu Forum.

Irina: Hi, Larry. Let’s start with your background and then go to the point where you got involved with the Keiretsu Forum.

Larry: My background is in technology consulting, and I have worked for companies like Capgemini and Oracle, dealing with CEOs and CFOs on mapping business strategy and leveraging technology.

I was in the consulting group for both those companies, and I would go out and understand what the business challenges were for Fortune companies then come back and put together solutions using technology to help companies either solve their business problems or initiate new strategies. That was in early 2000s. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Amit Grover, Member, Mumbai Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the nineteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Amit Grover, member of the Mumbai Angels and the founder of Nurture Talent Academy, a training institute for entrepreneurs in India.

Irina: Hi, Amit. Let’s start with your telling us a little bit about your background.

Amit: I am a mechanical engineer, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. I got my MBA from the India Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. I have worked with leading companies in the past few years, in different roles. I was a software engineer at Infosys Technology Limited, then I did my MBA. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Eric Paley, Managing Partner, Founder Collective (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the eighteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Eric Paley, managing partner of Founders Collective, a $50 million fund dedicated to investing in seed-stage deals. The fund has offices in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Irina: Hi, Eric. Let’s start with your background.

Eric: I am a two-time entrepreneur. My most recent company was founded when I was in business school and was called Brontes Technologies. It developed 3-D intra-oral imaging technology for use in dentistry. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Manu Kumar, Founder And Chief Firestarter, K9 Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Ravi Bulusu

This is the seventeenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Manu Kumar, the founder and chief firestarter at K9 Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that provides funding and support for concept-stage and seed-stage technology companies. It is based in Palo Alto, California.

Irina: Hi, Manu. Let’s start with your background.

Manu: I am an entrepreneur turned investor. I started my entrepreneurial career in the late 1990s while I was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon. I started my first company in 1996. That company was doing Web-based customer service. We built that company and sold it in 2000 to Epiphany. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ho Nam, General Partner, Altos Ventures (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the sixteenth interview in our series on seed financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Ho Nam, general partner at Altos Ventures, a first-stage venture capital firm, based in Menlo Park, Silicon Valley.

Irina: Hi, Ho. Why don’t you start with your background?

Ho: I got started at Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, and got a taste of venture capital business in the early days. I was at Bain from 1988 to 1990. At that time there were only two offices in the whole country, San Francisco and Boston. Bain did some work with smaller companies for equity compensation. We worked for a company called Lattice Semiconductor, which I think might still be their client after twenty years or so. We were hired by the new CEO before it went public. That gave me an interesting view into startups and reporting to a board. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the fifteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group , venture capital firm focused on making investments in early-stage information technology, Internet, and software startups, based in Boulder, Colorado. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Jeff Clavier, Founder And Managing Partner, SoftTech VC (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the fourteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Palo Alto-based Jeff Clavier, founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC, an early-stage venture capital firm managing a $15 million seed fund, SoftTech VC II.

Irina: Hi, Jeff. Could you tell us briefly about your personal background?

Jeff: I’m French born, raised and educated there. I have a master’s in computer science, with a minor in distributed computing. When I was at school, I did a startup in the financial services market (Effix Systems) that we sold to Reuters Venture Capital in 1993. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Alan Rossiter, vice chairman of Springboard Capital, an early-stage private equity fund in Jacksonville, Florida.

Irina: Hi, Alan. Could you please start with your own background?

Alan: In the recent past, I’ve been a private angel investor. Going back before that, I was a career naval officer, a Navy pilot for a number of years, and then I retired in the early 1990s. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twelfth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Mike Maples, managing partner of Floodgate, a fund with the superangel approach that bridges the gap between initial seed money raised from traditional angel investors and traditional VCs, and aims to find the fifteen most valuable companies that are created in any given year. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Basil Peters, CEO and Fund Manager, Fundamental Technologies II (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the eleventh interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Basil Peters, an angel investor with a passion for exit transactions who has been founding, financing, growing, and selling technology companies for over two decades. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Basil is the founder, CEO and fund manager of his fund, Fundamental Technologies II.

Irina: Hi, Basil. Tell us briefly about your background.

Basil: I was trained as a computer and electrical engineer and got a PhD here in my hometown, Vancouver. While I was still in graduate school, I started my first company, which was called Nexus Engineering, and we started out manufacturing satellite television and cable television equipment. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Peter Birkeland, RAIN Fund Program Manager, RAIN Source Capital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the tenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Peter Birkeland, RAIN Fund Program Manager at RAIN Source Capital, a multistate network of RAIN® funds.

The network currently has more than $33 million invested in 55 companies. Its head office is in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Irina: Hi Pete, Could you tell us a little about your own background?

Pete: I started off in public accounting and then wound up doing some incubation in a company and decided I wanted to work with startup businesses. From there I went to do some tech transfer work, and then years ago I joined RAIN Source to help on the financial side. Now I manage our RAIN Fund program.

Irina: Tell us about RAIN Source Capital.

Pete: RAIN Source Capital is network of angel funds, 23 of them, that operate mainly in the upper Northwest – Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Montana, and Idaho. These 23 funds are made of 450 accredited investors, and we’ve been operating as an entity for about 12 years and focused on specifically angel investing for the past seven.

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