I have said it a million times since learning the lesson myself in
a failed entrepreneurial effort a couple of years ago, the CEO of
any entrepreneurial venture must understand the importance of
managing cash flows and how to use cash flow analysis for the
strategic growth of the company.
Trust me, I am all into the Six Sigma approach of throwing a couple
of innovators together, rolling out a v1 product as quickly as
possible, and slowly scaling the company from hobby phase to a
successful...
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I'm going to cheat a little on this. I read a great blog post
by Jeff Ready over at the McStartup blog (www.mcstartup.com).
The blog post is all about the importance of radical
innovation. I have a place in my heart for radical innovation
because I believe that in the legal community, we are the radical
innovators. ACH strives after its goal to be an information
technology law firm, a venture capital law firm and a business law
firm, but we go about it in a way that is radical to many...
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There is a good
article on the Mercury News Blog today on
How dot-com
start-ups have changed 10 years later. The article
addresses the maturity of both technology companies and
US private equity investors over the last decade. It is
an interesting read.
There has been a lot of activity in angel investor groups and
venture capital investments in Indiana technology companies over
the last few months.
2010 has definitely started with a bang at
Alerding Castor Hewitt where we have helped five...
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I have taken a few
weeks off of blogging. Honestly, I felt like I needed the
break, but I am excited about getting back on the saddle and
writing again.
Since it has been a few weeks, let me give a brief update on what
we have been up to. Alerding Castor Hewitt has had an
exciting beginning to 2010. On January 1, Bill Boncosky
joined us. Bill is a business attorney / technology and SaaS
law attorney working with privately held companies, primarily in
technology industries. Bill has spent the...
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Yesterday I had the honor of
moderating the plenary panel on Funding Innovation in Indiana at
the TechPoint Innovation Summit. This was just a great
event.
The panel members included Michael Brown of Battery Ventures -
Boston, Michael Arpey of Credit Suisse - New York, Steve Hourigan
of the 21st Century Fund, Mathias Schilling of BV Capital - San
Francisco, and Bob Compton, a serial entrepreneur most recently
founding Vontoo, LLC. I want to thank the members once again
for their participation....
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I read an interesting post
yesterday on
Small Business Trends by Professor Scott Shane,
Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve
University. It is a good read for current entrepreneurs and
those daring to dream of starting their own company.
Here is the post:
Most entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about financing new
companies that hinder their efforts to raise money. Here are a
few:
Myth 1: It takes a lot of money to finance a new
business. Not true. The typical...
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I read an
interesting
blog
post by Thomas Klein of
Sand Hill Group this week on
the evolution and future of enterprise software.
Klein states that a new wave of enterprise software has emerged and
is “pulsating through the economy” and venture capital will soon
take notice. The new platform is marked principally by SaaS
and cloud computing. The industry visionaries are referring
to this new era of enterprise software as Enterprise 3.0.
I found Klein's summary of the history of enterprise...
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This ticks me off. I
understand that in a struggling economy the State needs to make
budget cuts, but instead of cutting spending in areas that
ultimately do not lead to economic improvement, our State
representatives are
considering cutting spending in an area that
have been the lifeblood of the State for the last quarter century –
technology.
This may have a huge impact on my clients as my law practice
centers on Indiana technology businesses – helping technology
businesses get innovations to...
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For my first foray into the world of blogging,
I think the important first step is to answer the standard
journalism questions necessary for any good story, namely, the who,
what, when, where, and why. Sorry for
the length. I promise that future blogs will be
shorter. Without further adieu, here we
go . . . .
Who: This one is easy because I
know a lot about me. My name is Chris
Stephen and I consider myself first and foremost a
litigator. Some people in my field like
to classify themselves...
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I am leaving today for Orange
County, CA once again. I have meetings scheduled this
week with two clients, one venture capital firm and one angel
investor group in Southern California. Regarding the later
two, we are working on securing capital funding for several
business clients of our firm.
When heading out to the East or West coast, I find it interesting
how different the investment community cultures are from the
culture of the Midwest. When presenting to most Midwest angel
investor...
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The National Association of Seed
and Venture Funds (NASVF), a national organization of public and
private equity firms and private equity investors, released a study
this week of 5,000 early stage funds and providers that support
young entrepreneurial companies and found that State level funding
for these companies is dire.
According to NASVF’s press release:
The survey found that the vast
majority of young innovative companies across the United States –
the emerging Microsofts, Ciscos, Apples...
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“In down economies,
the only thing that’s going to change things is changing
things.”
- Seth Godin
Anthony Ware is a co-founder with Sam Schmutte and me of VentureSpring, LLC, a
consulting and business alliance firm that helps emerging
businesses structure and meet capital requirements and develop
operational efficiencies. Anthony had a
great blog post this week. Here is an
excerpt:
The door is
open.
The time for
complaining about the economy is over… it's time...
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My law practice continues to expand into
international business deals. This year my firm has handled
several software licensing and Software as a Service (SaaS law)
transactions in Europe, Asia and the Middle East and several real
estate deals and private equity investments (through angel investor
groups and venture capital law firms) in Africa (see my blog post
on
Alerding Castor in Africa). A client of mine, S4X
Ventures, just recently announced their expansion into southern
Africa (
click
he...
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Several of my recent blog posts have addressed
raising private equity (e.g., raising capital from angel investor
groups and venture capital firms). It is easy for new
business ventures to focus on private equity raises and ignore the
art of bootstrapping. Of course, private equity offers seed
capital to launch a business into a market quicker (and for certain
business plans, time to market is essential), but for many
businesses, they can effectively start small, reinvest profits,
grow at a...
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December is always an exciting month for
entrepreneurial law attorneys. Most years December is my top
month for merger and acquisition deals, private placement offerings
and other business collaboration transactions. This past week
my firm closed two multi-million dollar acquisitions, one venture
capital transaction, and no less than five significant software
licensing deals for our clients. We also brought in three
more acquisition deals to finalize before the end of the
month. This is fun...
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Angel investors are essentially wealthy individuals
who can provide capital funding for a business. Raising money
from Angels is a bit different than raising money from venture
capitalists or other professional investors. While venture
capitalists are more focused on traditional business plans and
projections in determining whether to make an investment (e.g.,
capital structure, projected returns, management team, intellectual
property, marketing plans…), Angels are often more interested...
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