Landscape Of The Venture Capital Industry

Walnut Venture Associates are a group of angel investors. In 1997 the club had around a dozen individual investors, forming an “angel group”. Their primary targets are investments ranging from $250,000 to $1,000,000. This is due to the gap of capital funds initiated by the VC’s from not considering investments bellow $1 million. Also, angel investors can acquire significant equity at low cost, and help the growth of the company with their knowledge and expertise. By selecting only the most exceptional people and ideas, investments in startups can lead to massive returns on relatively small investments. As unexperienced entrepreneurs, they are a key resource to have in order to achieve quick growth, and secure the company’s early stages.

Venture capital firms typically appoint representatives on the company’s board and offers strategic advice to the

VC's care-abouts are Management, opportunity, size of market and the capital efficiency of the venture

Hart Venture Capital (HVC) specializes in providing venture capital for software development and Internet applications. Currently HVC has two investment opportunities: (1) Security Systems, a firm that needs additional capital to develop an Internet security software package, and (2) Market Analysis, a market research company that needs additional capital to develop a software package for conducting customer satisfaction surveys. In exchange for the Security Systems stock, the firm has asked HVC to provide $600,000 in year 1, $600,000 in year 2, and $350,000 in year 3. In exchange of their stock, Market Analysis has asked HVC to provide $500,000 in year 1, $350,000 in year 2,

Apex Investment Partners was founded in 1987 by James A. Johnson and the First Analysis Corporation. In its eight-year life, the VC had raised three funds. The two first which are already closed had, together, a committed capital of around $70M. There were mainly concentrated in four areas: • • • • Telecommunication, information technology and software. Environmental and industrial productivity-related technologies. Consumer products and specialty retail. Health-care and related technologies.

Zacharakis and Meyer’s research (1998) into the investment decision-making processes of VC investors is particularly pertinent to whether VC investments can be systematically improved and whether there are any gaps between understanding of their procedures and what happens in reality. Zacharakis, via studying 53 VCs from the two main start-up hubs in the United States (Silicon Valley and Colorado Front Range), establishes that there is a gap between the factors that affect VCs’ decision-making in reality and the factors that VCs identify as pertinent to their decision-making.

Private equity investments are primarily made by private equity firms, venture capital firms, or angel investors, each with their own set of goals, preferences and investment strategies.

Venture Capital is a specific term that refers to funding obtained from a venture capitalist. These are professional serial investors and may be individuals or part of a firm. Often venture capitalists have a niche based on business type and or size and or stage of growth. They are likely to see a lot of proposals in front of them (sometimes hundreds a month), be interested in a few, and invest in even fewer. Around 1-3% of all deals put to a venture capitalist get funded. So, with the numbers that low, you need to be clearly impressive.

Angel investors and venture capitalists also have more access to large amounts of capital and have connections that the current investors do not.

Find out the investor profile on the VC’s website, check out their social media and LinkedIn. You should even see if you have common acquaintances that can reveal you something.

Walnut Venture Associates is a small group of angel investors with backgrounds in the software industry. RBS is a small software company that makes billing and enterprise management software specifically targeted at other software companies. RBS and Walnut are deciding whether Walnut should invest in RBS, and then if they are willing, whether RBS finds the terms of the deal satisfactory. This case memo illustrates that the venture capitalists are looking for good managers in a particular industry, while entrepreneurs typically think funding is dependent on having a good idea. It also discusses why or why not RBS and Walnut might be a good fit for each other.

Venture Capital is one of the fastest emerging sources of finance for new entrepreneurs. In spite of its increasing popularity, funding via Venture Capital is faced with a number of difficulties. Thus, it is important to study the various aspects of raising funds through Venture Capital.

- If you are early round and received a reasonable valuation, your startup likely needs less capital. Additionally, it should take you less time to raise the money you need. For example, it’s going to be easier and faster to raise $2 million and at $6 million valuation than raising $10 million at any valuation. That may seem obvious, but it’s important to remember that you have more sources for capital as an early-stage startup. Investors are evaluating you based mainly off of your product and team, and there is a smaller risk for investors at this stage. At larger rounds, investors need to do more due diligence before funding, so it’ll be harder to

investors exist for larger amounts of capital such as VC funds and banks, entrepreneurial initiatives that require much smaller amounts to start with need to rely on friends and family or own savings. They then also make extensive use of bootstrapping techniques to mitigate their financial constraints, by boosting their short-term profits.

The last one Venture capitalists. It is finance provided for an equity stake in a potentially high growth company.