A New York Times article describes the controversy around the Small Business Expansion Act of 2007 allows small businesses to qualify for government grants even if they’ve accepted venture capital investment — as long as the VCs don’t own more than 50% of the company.
Monthly Archive for October, 2007
According to the latest report from the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF), Oregon companies closed $46.788M in VC investments in Q3, up from $43.448 in Q3 of last year. The NASVF numbers for Oregon for the past few quarters are:
Q3 2006 $43.448M
Q4 2006 $33.477M
Q1 2007 $108.688M
Q2 2007 $64.397M
Q3 2007 $46.788M
Ignite Portland, last Thursday evening, was a blast.
– 18 presentations
– Each was 5 minutes
… enforced by having 20 slides that auto-forwarded every 15 seconds
Lots of variety. Great networking. Excellent food and drink (even if the beer did run out a bit early!)
If you weren’t able to make it, or would like to see some of the 5-minute pitches again, there’s some great video posted here (full disclosure: it includes my presentation on "How to Create an Investor Pitch"; presentation #2). And check out the Ignite Portland website at http://www.igniteportland.com . And Silicon Florist lists quite a few posts/comments on the event. The idea is to make this a quarterly event, so stay tuned to the Ignite Portland website for another go a this in January.
In an article on their website, Portland law firm Swider Medeiros Haver describes changes to Oregon’s non-compete laws, including:
- The employer must inform the employee of the agreement’s requirements in a written employment offer received by the employee at least two weeks before the first day of employment, or
- The agreement is entered into upon a bona fide advancement of the employee if the requirements are disclosed in a written notice of advancement at least two (2) weeks prior to the effective date of the employee’s advancement.
Plus, there are some minimum-income requirements.
The Portland Business Journal reported today that CEO Judy MacDonald Johnston has reversed course and decided not to step down.
The Portland Business Journal reported today that local startup Avnera has announced two semiconductor products, and named three retail products that use their technology. Avnera was started in 2004 by Manpreet Khaira who sold his previous startup, Mobilian Corp, to Intel.
In a recent special report, The Economist magazine argued that “the best thing that governments can do to encourage innovation is to get out of the way.” Several attempts to reproduce a Silicon-Valley-like cluster effect around the world have resulted in less than spectacular results.
Some companies don’t need a lot of angel investment — and in those cases there’s a danger that the legal fees involved in structuring the documents could consume a large fraction of the investment. Hence the idea of standardized documents with very low cost legal fees, as described in this TechConfidential.com story.
TechConfidential.com reported that at a panel session during the IBF Early Stage Venture conference, some VCs said less some less than complementary things about angels:
- “Some of these angel organizations are social clubs for retired individuals who don’t really care to help build the business,” said Jack Carsten, managing director with Horizon Ventures in Los Altos, Calif.
and
- “I can’t tell you how many companies I have seen that have made themselves basically unfundable because they were overvalued in an early round,” agreed David Collier, managing director of CMEA Ventures in San Francisco.
The article attracted a number of comments, and a response here. The whole discussion motivated Ted Driscoll (who was on the panel) to write a post on his blog arguing that because of valuation challenges, angels should use convertible-notes as their investment instrument.
Luis Villalobos of Tech Coast Angels wrote a detailed and informative article on how startups are valued. If you’ve asked the question “how does an investor determine my company’s pre-money valuation?”, this article is worth reading.
