Venture & Angel Capital

Will the Early Stage Innovation Program Make a Difference?

By Scott Shane - Apr 25, 2011 - 3 Comments

The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently announced the start of the Early Stage Innovation Fund, a program that will provide $200 million per year in equity funding “over the next five years,” to “early-stage companies [that] face difficult challenges accessing capital, particularly … Read More

Helping Women Entrepreneurs Get Angel Capital

By Rieva Lesonsky - Apr 20, 2011 - 3 Comments

The relative difficulty that women entrepreneurs have in finding financing for their businesses has long been a topic of concern. Now a new project is aiming to improve women’s access to capital by mentoring and training women to become angel investors and eventually fund other women’s … Read More

Are Venture Capitalists and Business Angels Biased Against Female Entrepreneurs?

By Scott Shane - Feb 7, 2011 - 25 Comments

Many observers have argued that venture capitalists and business angels are biased against female entrepreneurs. Academics, however, have found those claims hard to substantiate. The main evidence for bias – that only a small fraction of entrepreneurs receiving venture capital and angel money are … Read More

A Peek Behind the Angel Curtain Reveals 3 Secrets to Attracting Money

By Todd Taskey - Jan 6, 2011 - 12 Comments

Finding startup capital has never been easy, and has become a more significant challenge over the past few years. Home equity, once the most popular form of startup and working capital, has almost disappeared with the collapse of housing prices. Bank lending has been almost nonexistent for … Read More

Are Venture Capitalists Making Money?

By Scott Shane - Dec 30, 2010 - 3 Comments

Venture capital (VC) companies have performed poorly in recent years, according to Cambridge Associates' recently released statistics. Analysis by the consulting firm revealed that rates of return have dwindled substantially from the double-digit annual numbers they enjoyed in the 1990s. As of … Read More

Entrepreneurial Finance in Recovery

By Scott Shane - Dec 28, 2010 - 3 Comments

The Great Recession officially ended in June 2009--at least, so say the economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research. That means it's time for me to start writing about entrepreneurial finance during the economic recovery. What has happened to small business finance since the end of the … Read More

Look Up in the Sky: It’s a Super Angel

By Anita Campbell - Dec 24, 2010 - 2 Comments

Venture capital has gotten harder to obtain in the recession years (VCs, like everyone else, have gotten more conservative with their investments). That's why today's innovative startup entrepreneurs are seeking financing from a new type of source: the “super angel.” Halfway between … Read More

How “Investor Preference” Will Help You Attract Funding

By Todd Taskey - Dec 23, 2010 - 4 Comments

"Back in the day" (late 1999) I was a part of an investor group that contributed $1 million for a 35 percent ownership stake in a startup technology venture that held a lot of promise (don’t they all?). You can probably guess the next chapter in this story. The tech bubble burst, the NASDAQ … Read More

California Rules the Venture Capital Ecosystem

By Scott Shane - Dec 22, 2010 - 3 Comments

California has been the number-one state for venture investing for more than 30 years. It doesn't matter whether you measure VC activity in dollars, deals done, or capital under management. Actually, based on certain measures, California today accounts for a larger slice of the venture capital pie … Read More

Venture Capital: Manufacturing Is Not the Path to Stimulate Economic Growth

By Scott Shane - Nov 18, 2010 - 6 Comments

California has a high share of venture capital. But in a recent article, Where's The Beef? Can Venture Capital Save California?, Gino DiCaro, Vice President of Communications for the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, makes an interesting point: point: All of California’s … Read More

Raising Venture Capital: 7 Tips

By Prasad Thammineni - Sep 15, 2010 - 6 Comments

Last year I had the good fortune to raise some venture financing for my business. I did have a slight advantage because one of my employees had previously been a venture capitalist and gave me some advice. However, the process was still challenging. Here are seven key pieces of advice based on … Read More

Acquisitions of Corporate Venture Capital Portfolio Companies

By Scott Shane - Sep 13, 2010 - 4 Comments

Corporate venture capitalists often invest in start-up companies to identify the right businesses to purchase later. In fact, according to David Benson of Brigham Young University and Rosemarie Ziedonis of the University of Oregon, 20 percent of acquisitions made by the companies with the largest … Read More