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Event Date was Tuesday Aug 18, 2020. Raising capital in Colorado has unique challenges. While local investment dollars are increasing, it is still difficult to fund larger rounds with mostly Colorado investors. However, focusing your raise in Colorado keeps the startup ecosystem thriving and provides opportunities to pay it forward to future founders. Join us for this elevated take on venture capital and closing your round. We’ll address Colorado’s unique venture landscape, how to know when a VC is actually interested to avoid soft-offer guessing games, securing your lead investor, which companies are best suited to raise capital in Colorado, as well as how the current climate is affecting valuations, VC portfolios and company exits.
Guest Moderator:
Jim Dunn, Partner at D Partners, https://www.dp-llc.com/
Jim has thirty years of progressive leadership experience with emerging growth companies in business and tech enabled services, information and telecommunications industries. D Partners is a team of proven CxO-level business builders and change agents who find and build value for lower to mid-market investment thesis. We partner with private equity to find and build growth companies by applying our intellectual capital and transformative technology.
Guest Panelists:
Betty Arkell, Equity Shareholder at Robinson Waters & O’Dorisio, P.C. https://rwolaw.com/
Betty leverages extensive corporate finance and M&A transactional experience to guide companies through the entire corporate lifecycle, from formation through growth and planned exit. Her clients include established and emerging growth companies as well as venture capital and other private equity funds. She works with clients in a variety of industries, including software, technology, telecommunications, analytics, medical devices, healthcare, fintech and manufacturing. Betty draws on considerable involvement with community and nonprofit organizations, including membership on numerous boards, to deliver prudent guidance and advice to management teams. Education: University of Colorado School of Law, J.D., Order of the Coif, Law Review; Storke Scholar, University of Colorado, M.A. Political Science.
Zach Nies, SVP at Techstars and Managing Director at Techstars Sustainability in Partnership with the Nature Conservancy https://www.techstars.com/https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/sustainability
Zach Nies is Managing Director at Techstars Sustainability program and a member of the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His whole career has been dedicated to entrepreneurship at startups and inside large companies. He is using that experience guided by his core value of Learn, Do, Teach, Learn to help companies of all sizes successfully bring new products and services to market. At CU, he is an Advisory Board Member for the Silicon Flatirons Center and an Executive Advisory Board Member for the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Before joining Techstars, Zach was Chief Technologist at Rally Software. Zach has a BS, Computer Science Engineering from Colorado University.
Mark Newhouse, Partner at Innosphere Fund https://innosphere.fund/
Mark has built his career delivering breakthrough products and businesses that have generated more than $2.0 billion in revenue, in the telecommunications, consumer electronics and cleantech markets. Mark came to Denver from Shanghai where he was a Senior Vice President of Corning Incorporated. Since coming to Colorado Mark has been investing in and advising a variety of startup companies including: Bioptigen (acquired by Danaher in 2016), Replay Technologies (acquired by Intel in 2016), Insight Photonics, Yonomi, Zoomcar, Arbe Robotics, and the Maniv Mobility Fund. Mark is a General Partner of the Innosphere Fund a seed stage venture fund. Mark currently serves on the Board of the Denver Foundation, Denver Social Venture Partners and Impact Charitable.
Paul Smith, https://www.dp-llc.com
Venture Backed CEO and Active Investor Paul is a veteran Silicon Valley investor and CEO. He has turned around and sold companies, raised venture capital, served on public boards, and invested successfully in public and private companies. He is especially interested in products and technology, market strategy and segmentation, and developing strong exits for his companies. He has been CEO or VP in companies backed my NEA, Mayfield, Intel Capital, US Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and other investors.
Chris Hagan, Partner at Perkins Coie, https://www.perkinscoie.com/en/
Corporate lawyer Christopher Hagan has more than 25 years of experience in private equity and mergers and acquisitions, where he leads and advises on private equity transactions, mergers and acquisitions, growth equity financings and management incentive structuring, as well as general corporate law. His practice emphasis is on representation of middle and lower middle market private equity funds and their portfolio companies in buyout transactions, add-on acquisitions, divestitures and general corporate matters. Chris represents PE investment funds, hedge funds, family offices, fundless sponsors, management teams and institutional investors.
Who Should Attend?
- Anyone who is thinking about raising money for their startup
- Anyone that wants an understanding of fundraising for early stage and Series A businesses and products
What are some of the Topics?
- The key metrics and pre-requisites for raising funding, and the anatomy of a “fundable” company
- How to make yourself more attractive to investors
- How do VC investors look at risk
- The history of fundraising in Colorado
- What are some of the unique characteristics of the investor community in Colorado