Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum: 2014-15 Angel & Venture Capital Financing Overview

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 08/28/2014
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Location
Helzel Boardroom (F299) Haas School of Business


Click here for program and speaker information.

Video (video on YouTube site):


In 2014 the early stage financing environment exploded with valuations and the number of financings increasing substantially, including several multi-billion dollar fundings.  By some measures the number of venture fundings in Q2 of 2014 approached levels not seen since the days of the internet bubble.  2014 also continued a number of trends from prior years:  the growing influence of founders/entrepreneurs, the significant growth in the activity of seed/angel investors as well as alternative funding platforms and incubators. Please join our panel of expert angel and venture capital investors for a look at early stage investing during the past year and what the future investment environment holds. The presentation will also include a review of the key metrics for venture capital investments/exits and critical VC term sheet terms for Q2 2014. Don’t miss this thought provoking and informative session!

MODERATOR
Sam Angus Samuel B. Angus
Partner
, Fenwick & West LLP
Samuel B. Angus is a partner in the Corporate and Venture Capital Group of Fenwick & West LLP, a law firm specializing in technology and life sciences matters. Mr. Angus is resident in the San Francisco office and his practice concentrates on advising start-up/venture-backed companies, venture capital and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property licensing, joint ventures and general corporate matters. Mr. Angus represents a broad range of companies from privately held start-up companies to publicly traded corporations, including Airbnb, Elance-oDesk, Github, Imgur, Marin Software, RelayRides and Voxer, among others. His practice also includes advising entrepreneurs and investors.
PANELISTS
Steve Bengston Steve Bengston
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Steve Bengston heads the Emerging Company Services (ECS) group at PricewaterhouseCoopers. ECS acts as “mentor capitalists” for young, high potential companies. Before joining PwC, Steve had 20 years of experience in a variety of marketing, business development and general management roles at several high tech companies in the Bay Area. Most recently, he was Pres/CEO of ynot.com, a leading international emarketing and greeting card company. Previously, he was VP Marketing & Business Development at Worldview Systems, an Internet travel pioneer. At Worldview, Steve helped launch and market Travelocity with Sabre Interactive. Steve has a BA in Economics and MBA from Stanford University. He works closely or sits on the Advisory Board at Churchill Club, SVASE, Life Science Angels, Bay Bio, and the Stanford/MIT Venture Lab, has taught classes on startups at UC Berkeley, San Jose State, Santa Clara Law School, Hastings Law School, and Stanford, and is active in a variety of other organizations in the Bay Area targeting entrepreneurs and investors. He is a frequent moderator/panelist at both university and industry sponsored events.
Josh Breinlinger Josh Breinlinger
Sigma West
Josh joined Sigma West in 2010, bringing six years of startup experience. He has expertise in online marketing, marketplaces, and crowdsourcing. Josh was the 4th employee at oDesk, running Sales, Marketing, Product, and Business Development over five years and contributing to the company’s growth from almost nothing to $100M in annual services. Josh was also the head of product and marketing at AdRoll, helping to design and build the #1 retargeting platform. Prior to oDesk and AdRoll, Josh was a consultant at Arthur D. Little. Josh has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jeff Clavier Jeff Clavier
SoftTech VC

Jean-Francois “Jeff” Clavier is the Founder and Managing Partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most established seed VC firms in Silicon Valley, having closed 150 investments since 2004.  An early angel investor in Web 2.0, Jeff and his team have backed successful startups like Mint (Intuit), Kongregate (GameStop), Brightroll, Mashery (Intel), LiveRamp (Axciom), Milo (eBay), Wildfire (Google), Bleacher Report (Turner), Fitbit, Eventbrite, Sendgrid, Zefr, Coin, August, Hired, Poshmark and Vungle. The portfolio has also seen acquisitions by Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and AOL. The firm is currently investing out of its $85M Fund IV, making 15 commitments of $500K to $1M+ per year in mobile services and infrastructure, vertical saas and cloud infrastructure, consumer services and devices, B2B/B2C marketplaces.
Howard Hartenbaum Howard Hartenbaum
August Capital
Howard Hartenbaum joined August Capital in 2008. Prior to joining, he served as a General Partner at Draper Richards LP where he was the founding investor in Skype and a former member of the board of directors where his achievement resulted in his joining the Forbes Midas List of top venture capitalists.Before entering the venture capital field, Howard was at Hughes Electronics, where he was responsible for supporting business development, marketing and sales of satellite, information security and automotive technologies developed by HRL Laboratories. He also worked in engineering positions in ergonomics and user experience at Honda Motor Company and manufacturing at Teledyne Relays. Howard has worked overseas for a total of ten years in Luxembourg and Japan. He is a graduate of M.I.T.
 
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Event and Registration Information

The program begins with a networking hour at 6:30 PM with complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the Bank of America Forum at the Haas School of Business.

Registration is required: click here. Online pre-registration ends at 5 pm Tuesday, August 26 and all registrations after this time, if seats are still available, must be completed on site at the event.

If you are unfamiliar with the UC Berkeley campus, check out the campus map.

 

 

The Lester Center appreciates the generous support of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum Sponsors:

Burr Pilger Meyer Deloitte Fenwick & West
Siemens SVB