8:50-9:20 Seminar Session 1
Valuation of Early Stage Companies
David Fein is the CEO of ValuSource, KeyValueData and Institute of Business Appraisers. David is an entrepreneur, world traveler and adventurer. At 16, he was the second-youngest person ever to set foot on the South Pole. For over twenty years ValuSource has been the leading provider of business valuation software. David was as semi-finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Rocky Mountain region in 2011. You may reach him at 719-799-6025 or at dfein@valusource.com.
What to Expect from Angels
Debra Duke is Founder, President & CEO MenoGeniX which was founded in June 2010. Ms. Duke has an extensive entrepreneurial background including human resource management, staffing, and recruiting for the oil & gas, renewable energy, biotech and pharmaceutical industries both as a principal in recruiting firms and at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. She is also President of Duke Medical Research Group, LLC, a large consulting firm she established to provide third party independent research to the financial investment industry. In addition, she has served in several leadership, fundraising, and marketing roles of various professional, civil, and charitable organizations. She has raised angel capital and has worked with over 20 angel investors.
Scott Yates has raised angel capital for two different companies, and has the scars to prove it. He is currently the CEO and founder of Blogmutt, and angel-financed company that is a blog writing service. His first company, which raised no investment at all, was sold to Traffic.com in 2006. Before starting his startup life, Scott was an award-winning writer in New York and Colorado, and continues to write occasionally on his blog at sco.tt
Rustin Banks (co-founder, CEO) started building online communities 15 years ago by hosting bulletin board systems (BBS) in his parents’ closet. With an MS in Electrical Engineering, he left his position in Aerospace designing next-gen satellite systems to start BlogFrog in 2009. BlogFrog has grown to a 30+ person company whose influencer marketing platform engages over 100,000 bloggers with top brands. He and his wife, Tara, live in Colorado and he blogs about leadership and being the father of three small children.
9:30-10:00 Seminar Session 2
Investing in the Life Sciences
Lauren Costantini is an advisor to emerging lifesciences companies. She has 20+ years developing therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. Her experience includes lead product development from research through clinical, regulatory, and commercialization stages. In the past she was the Vice President of Accera (developed and launched Alzheimer’s therapeutic), faculty at Harvard Medical School and is currently involved in Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. She has expertise in establishing early stage life science/medical device companies and was voted the ‘Business Advisor of the Year’ 2011 by University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office.
Equity vs Convertible Debt
Timothy R. Woods, CPA, MBA, MSF, is a Shareholder of Mayer Hoffman McCann P.C. and a Managing Director at CBIZ MHM, LLC. He has worked in public accounting, consulting, and private industry for the past 20 years, focusing on financial statement audits for both publicly traded and privately held companies. In addition to providing professional audit, accounting and advisory services for small and mid size companies; Tim is also an active angel investor and a member of the Rocky Venture Club and Angel Investor Forum. Tim is active in the community, including serving as the Co-Chair of the Investment Committee of the 2012 Angel Capital Summit. He is a subject matter expert in the areas of derivatives and hedging activities, complex debt and equity transactions, including stock based compensation, and fair valuation issues.
10:10-10:40 Seminar Session 3
Women Investors
Elizabeth Kraus is a Colorado angel investor, Rockies Venture Club member and co-founder of the Impact Angel Group, a group of investors equally dedicated to making a difference and realizing a return. Prior to founding the Impact Angel Group, Kraus ran her own startups, myUsearch.com and Take it OUT! Fitness, and now spends most of her time convincing smart people that investing for social and environmental impact isn’t just “feel good” investing, but is “real” investing. She is a startup mentor and advisor, and has been very active in the state and national effort to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem and mobilize angel investors.
Sue Kunz’s experience spans numerous roles including CEO, Founder and corporate executive. She was CEO of BioVantage Resources and CEO and Founder of Solidware. Kunz was also a Director at Sun Microsystems, had an independent consultancy in Germany, and held various marketing positions at IBM, also in Europe. Her international stretch started as Kunz set up the European offices for Boulder-based startup, Precision Visuals. Sue is a member of the Governor Hickenlooper’s Colorado Innovation Network, served on the Governor’s Venture Capital Committee and on former Governor Bill Ritter’s Council for Innovation. Kunz also serves on multiple boards and advisory boards.
Carolina Hensley is a Vice President at Progress Equity Partners, Ltd. Ms. Hensley has 14 years of experience in investment banking, mezzanine investing and private equity and has been involved in 20+ transactions over her career. Prior to joining Progress Equity in 2011, Ms. Hensley has held positions with Guaranty Bank and Trust, Highline Equity Partners, NewWest Capital Partners, Rocky Mountain Capital Partners and SG Cowen. She has been intimately involved with many aspects of business and investing including leading transactions, serving as an interim CFO, commercial lending and investment banking.
Michelle Eidson is the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Platte River Equity. Prior to joining Platte River, Ms. Eidson was the Director of Corporate Development for EchoStar Corporation where she sourced and evaluated investments and acquisitions and helped establish EchoStar’s strategic investment practice. Ms. Eidson has also held positions with Holden Capital, a Denver-based venture capital firm focused on early stage technology investments and JPMorgan Chase & Co. She began her career in Cairo, Egypt, as a consultant with Arthur Andersen on a USAID-backed project for the Government of Egypt.
Anatomy of a Negotiation
Richard C. Duke, Ph.D. is a biotechnology executive, inventor, biomedical researcher and serial entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in building, financing, and managing start-up biotechnology companies based on inventions made in Colorado’s non-profit research institutions. He is currently Founder and CSO of the Colorado Institute for Drug, Device and Diagnostic Development and is Co-scientific Founder and Acting President and CEO of ApopLogic Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Duke has provided independent 3rd party research analysis in the life sciences sector to Janus Capital and to venture capital firms. He is a graduate of McGill University (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) and the University of Colorado (Ph.D.). Dr. Duke strongly believes in the merits and opportunities that arise from building new companies based on University technologies and enjoys working with academic entrepreneurs.
Jeffrey Rona is a Managing Director at Rona Capital, LLC. Jeff has over 20 years of experience in corporate finance, as both an investment banker and as the senior financial officer for development stage life sciences companies. As a senior financial executive, Jeff has raised over $300 million of capital, completed two liquidity events and negotiated several licensing agreements. From 2006-2011, Jeff was Chief Business Officer for GlobeImmune, Inc., and successful raised approximately $65 million of private capital for the company. In 2009, he completed a broad oncology partnership with Celgene, Inc. that brought $40 million of capital into the Company and included the potential for downstream milestones and royalties of over $500 million.
10:50-11:20 Seminar Session 4
Best Practices of Angel Investing
Elizabeth Kraus’ biography is listed under the Women Investors Panel.
Steve Warnecke has been the CFO for Frontier Airlines, SVP of Strategic Planning at First Data/Western Union, CFO at Bacterin International, Board member at Evolving Systems and several private companies and currently serves as the CEO of Evolutionary Genomics. He has taken three companies public via reverse merger and has been an angel investor in seven companies. He currently represents an investor group working to provide startup funding for VetDC and has been very active in Rockies Venture Club.
John Ives has been starting or funding tech companies since 1997. He also founded Boulder Angels, a small network of Boulder-based angels. John’s current investments include MobiPlug, LineRate Systems, TempoDB, Ambiq Micro, Tuscany Design Automation, Kozio and Ignighter. He has an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis and a BS EE/CS from CU-Boulder.
Peter Edwards helped launch the global energy venture capital firm, Altira Group, in 1996 and helped it grow to nearly $300,000,000. While he was at Altira, he and his colleagues invested $80,000,000 in 40 energy technology companies. He has been an active board member of over a dozen private and public companies. Currently he is an angel investor and serves as legal counsel to equity investors and emerging companies.
How to Listen to the World
Carly Gloge is the CEO / Co-founder of Ubooly, which launched in early 2012 with plans to change the way how kids play. Ubooly is a recent grad of the TechStars accelerator program, and has received national press coverage for its innovation and unique start-up approach to building toys. Prior to Ubooly, Carly launched Warb, a design firm which specialized in interactive media that helped over 100 companies launch their new products & services.
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