The Secret to Getting Funded:
Using Sustainable Financing
During this tumultuous period, startups and emerging companies are questioning what will happen to the usual sources of investment capital. Angels and venture capitalists alike are signaling that the months to come may be brutal. Whatever “lift” the equity and credit markets may get from the upcoming election, it is a given that we are in choppy economic waters.
In this environment, the examples set and the lessons learned by three Northwest startups—3TIER, Novinium, and Theo Chocolate—are more valuable than ever. Join the MIT Enterprise Forum as we explore how these companies have navigated their own financial storms to build successful companies using both traditional and non-traditional sources of capital. Each company has made unconventional choices along the way and grown by practicing what could be called “sustainable financing.”
Our panel will include:
- Glen Bertini, CEO of Novinium
- Kenneth Westrick, CEO of 3TIER
- Joseph Whinney, CEO of Theo Chocolate
David Weld of Vox Advisors will moderate the panel. Gerry Langeler, a managing director of OVP Venture Partners, based in Portland, will serve as a “respondent,” bringing a professional venture capitalist’s perspective to the discussion. David and Gerry will provide their viewpoints on how the angel and venture capital markets are changing in the midst of the overall financial crisis.
Our panelists will share:
· What they experienced with angels and VC funders
· The showstoppers they faced
· Alternative sources of financing they found along the way
· The special advantages brought by “sustainable” sources of financing and how they compared with angel or VC investors
· Insights on how they believe the angel/VC market is changing
Mark your calendars for this one-of-a-kind, enlightening dinner event.
BIOS OF PANELISTS, MODERATOR
Moderator: David Weld
Founder and Managing Partner, Vox Advisors LLC
David is a co-founder and managing partner of Vox Advisors LLC.
David is a seasoned executive and entrepreneur. He has experience in a range of disciplines and industries and has held senior executive and management roles in both public and private companies over his twenty five year career.
David spent five years at Microsoft as a group manager and director. As a group manager, David shipped the first two versions of Windows NT, the foundation for all future Windows workstation and server platforms representing tens of billions of dollars in revenue. At Microsoft, David also shipped the first two versions of MSN, including the global release of the first version of MSN concurrently with the launch of Windows 95.
While at Microsoft, David also helped to create Michael Kinsley’s Slate magazine by building the technical and production teams and platforms for Slate. David named Slate.
David served as the president and COO of Loudeye, a publicly traded digital media company. While at Loudeye, David oversaw the design, creation, and operations of an 80 terabyte production and hosting facility.
David is a serial entrepreneur who has been involved with a number of successful early stage startups, including four as CEO (Cognisoft, alive.com, MessageGate, and PivotLink). David has raised almost $50 million in venture capital as CEO.
Earlier in his career, David worked as a consultant at Accenture where he worked on technical projects and served, among other roles, as a database designer and administrator and a mainframe capacity planning expert for systems of massive scale. David also worked in mergers and acquisitions and structured finance in investment banking on Wall Street. David has formal accounting training and has passed the SEC’s Series 7 exam (not current).
David helped to run the successful gubernatorial campaign for Gov. William F. Weld (Mass.), joining the campaign when the candidate was 35 points down in the primary polls and helping to drive toward a landslide primary victory and a general election victory.
David currently sits on the boards of OCS-Dental, a healthcare informatics company, and Washington Wine and Beverage Company (Silver Lake Winery, Glen Fiona Winery, Fish Brewing). David currently sits on the advisory boards of Inrix, IOActive, docverse, and the Entrepreneurship Center at Seattle University.
David is an avid outdoorsman, skier, and chef who learned to cook over an open fire on the range in the Southwest.
David has an A.B. in computer science and Russian from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
Respondent: Gerard H. Langeler
Managing Director, OVP Venture Partners
Gerry Langeler is a Managing Director with OVP Venture Partners, the most successful venture capital firm in the Pacific Northwest. OVP is in its 25th year, having raised its seventh fund (OVP VII) in 2006 at $250 million. OVP has over $750 million of capital under management. OVP focuses on early-stage companies in communications, software infrastructure, digital biology, digital media, clean technology and nanotechnology.
Since 1983, OVP has backed over 100 startups – and seen 52 liquidity events, with 22 IPOs, and 30 others being acquired by public companies. From 1981 to 1992, Gerry was co-founder of Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) where he served as President as it grew to over $400M in sales and $1B in market capitalization. Today, it is still the second largest software company in the Pacific Northwest.
He is the author of The Vision Trap (Harvard Business Review, 3/92), which is widely used in business schools and corporate training forums. He also authored a chapter in Venture Capital Best Practices, Aspatore Books, 2005. He holds an AB, Chemistry, Cornell University; MBA, Harvard University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Ambric, Carbonflow, Collaborative Software Initiative, EnerG2, Max-Viz, M2E Power and Viral Logic Systems Technology, and as back-up OVP partner on Advanced Inquiry Systems and Serus.
Panelist: Glen J. Bertini
President, CEO and Chairman, Novinium, Inc.
Glenn J. Bertini has spent the last two decades working with cable rejuvenation technology beginning with its development at Dow Corning in 1985 and continuing through its commercialization and growth to over 80 million feet of cable rejuvenated so far. Mr. Bertini was employed by Dow Corning, a silicon chemical manufacturer, as a development engineer, where he focused on the thermodynamics of multi-component systems and was part of a small team that developed and commercialized the first cable rejuvenation products. With over 35 articles published on the subject of cable rejuvenation technology, Mr. Bertini is the world's foremost authority. Mr. Bertini holds a total of 17 patents on cable rejuvenation and related technologies and has 8 more pending. In 1992, he was co-recipient of the prestigious R&D 100 award for cable rejuvenation. In 2005 and 2006 Mr. Bertini and Novinium won numerous awards for best investment opportunities at various angel forums including ESIF (Early Stage Investor’s Forum), the Vancouver Angel Forum, and the $100,000 Zino Zillionaire Investment Forum. Mr. Bertini holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, is a senior Member of the IEEE, a voting member of the ICC (Insulated Conductors Committee), and is a licensed professional engineer.
Panelist: Kenneth Westrick
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 3TIER
Kenneth Westrick is the founder and CEO of 3TIER, one of the largest independent providers of wind, solar and hydro energy assessment and power forecasting worldwide with offices in North America, Latin America and Asia. Westrick has led 3TIER’s “REmapping the World” campaign to accelerate global adoption and integration of renewable energy projects by eliminating the greatest barrier to developing renewable resources – lack of information.
Prior to founding 3TIER in 1999, Westrick earned both bachelor and masters degrees in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington and was an integral member of the University’s PRISM Project, where he specialized in weather and environmental forecasting techniques and computer modeling strategies. Westrick also served nearly 14 years in the US Army, including tours with the US Army Ranger Regiment and Special Operations Command.
Under Westrick’s leadership, 3TIER has become the renewable energy information leader by combining cutting edge information technology with leading atmospheric and climate science. Today, 3TIER employs more than 60 people and serves customers around the globe.
Westrick is a regular spokesperson about the viability of renewable energy. His perspectives and thoughts have been featured in The Wall Street Journal Online, CNN, The Financial Times, USAToday.com, Forbes.com, The Washington Post, and The Seattle Times.
Panelist: Joe Whinney
CEO, Theo Chocolate
Founder/CEO Joe Whinney manages the only organic chocolate roaster in the United States; his was the first U.S. company to use only fair-trade certified cocoa beans in its products. Joe builds and maintains relationships with those growing his cocoa beans. Not only is this model sustainable, it is particularly commendable; Joe’s growers fare far better than their non-fair-trade counterparts, who may only earn a pittance – or even be enslaved – to pick cocoa beans.
Joe is a self-taught serial entrepreneur; Theo is his second chocolate company. In the 90’s Joe founded a company that supplied organic cocoa to chocolate manufacturers. At its peak, that company supplied 90% of the organic chocolate used in the US. Unfortunately, his first chocolate business foundered in the 2001-era recession, and, to enable his creditors to be able to write-off their losses, he formally filed for bankruptcy. As we will hear from Joe, he has been applying the lessons he learned from his first chocolate company to make his second chocolate company a success.
Joe learned a great deal about financing from his first chocolate company, and he is applying that knowledge to imbue not just Theo Chocolate, but its financing structure, with a sustainable nature.
Joe will elaborate on financing lessons that for him have become unforgettable; as he likes to say: “Once you have learned something the hard way, you never forget it.”
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