Exit Strategies for Success

You are one of them...a dedicated entrepreneur, who has poured her heart and sweat into the venture. Does this single minded dedication to launch and grow the business have to exclude thoughts of potential future exits? On the contrary, an exit strategy is an important element of the overall business strategy that describes the vision of how you will eventually capitalize on your investment. This is important because the decisions about how you structure and operate the business can have huge implications down the road.

Let us hear from experienced panelists, who have participated in successful exits that have come in various sizes and forms. They will talk about exit strategy planning and, just as important, what exits look and feel like in real life to an entrepreneur, lawyer and an investor.

Panel:

James L. Waters

James Waters is a private Venture Capitalist. He is currently involved with 5 companies; investing in them and working with the management as a mentor to develop the potential of each business.

His entrepreneurial journey began with the founding of James L. Waters Inc. which was sold to Mine Safety Appliance Co. In 1958, he founded Waters Associates Inc. By 1963 the company had 75 employees, $3,000,000 in annual sales and subsidiaries in England and West Germany. In 1967-'71 he transformed Waters Associates to an HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) company. Waters dominated the market with a 40% market share while competing with DuPont, Varian, Perkins-Elmer and Hewlett Packard. Today, Waters Corporation is a publicly traded company, with more than 5,000 employees, a 35% market share of HPLC and annual sales of close to $1.5 billion.

He founded Waters Foundation (a private foundation) in 1957 and has made major contributions to universities, social organizations and to the improvement of curriculum in elementary and secondary schools using System Dynamics. To date, his contributions total more than $20,000,000.

He holds 7 patents in the field of instrumentation. He has served on several boards of directors and is a trustee emeritus of Northeastern University.

His public service has been as a Framingham Town Meeting member, a member of the Framingham North High School building committee and both as a member and twice as chairman of the Framingham School Committee.

Mr. Waters received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from from Columbia University and an honorary Doctor of Science from Northeastern University.

Matthew S. Eckert, Partner, Foley Hoag, LLP, http://www.foleyhoag.com/

Matt Eckert’s diverse business law practice focuses on advising start-up and emerging growth clients across the spectrum of development stages on early-stage business matters, commercial transactions, capital-raising and mergers and acquisitions, as well as representing venture funds in their portfolio investments. He regularly advises publicly traded clients on matters of corporate finance, including public and private equity and high-yield debt offerings, buy-side acquisitions, and securities law compliance. In addition to being a partner at Foley Hoag, Matt serves as Co-Chair of the firm's Emerging Company and Venture Capital group.

Tal M. Unrad, Associate,Burns & Levinson

[email protected]

Tal Unrad is an Associate in the Firm’s Corporate, Bankruptcy, Canada Practice, Finance, Securities, Venture Capital & Private Equity Groups. He joined Burns & Levinson in September of 2008, after participating in the Firm’s Summer Associate Program in 2007. In his corporate practice, Mr. Unrad represents foreign and domestic middle market businesses and investors in mergers and acquisitions, commercial financing arrangements, other transactional matters, general business affairs, e-commerce and cross border transactions. He has experience working with start-up and emerging companies in all stages of their life cycles, from incorporation, business plan preparation, seed and venture capital financing, intellectual property protection, employment matters, strategic relationships, business combinations, mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings.

Prior to joining the firm, he worked in the legal department of Travelers Insurance where he concentrated mainly on policy drafting and coverage disputes under commercial surety, public official bonds and management (D&O) liability insurance. Previously, Mr. Unrad served as a Public Affairs Officer at the Consulate General of Israel to New England, working directly with U.S. and Israeli universities, students and faculty. Mr. Unrad is currently a member of the Boston, New York and Connecticut Bar Associations, as well as the Tufts Lawyers Association and ACCESS Boston Co-Chair of the American Jewish Committee. He is admitted to practice in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Mr. Unrad received a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law in May 2008. While at University of Connecticut, he was a Dean’s Scholarship and Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity Karno Scholarship recipient. He was also an editor of the Connecticut Journal of International Law and a member of the university’s first Vis International Commercial Moot Arbitration team. Mr. Unrad received a B.A. from Tufts University in May 2002; he has also studied at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina, the University of Haifa, Faculty of Law in Israel and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Previously, Mr. Unrad served as a Public Affairs Officer at the Consulate General of Israel to New England, working directly with U.S. and Israeli universities, students and faculty. Mr. Unrad is presently the co-chair of the Boston Bar Association’s International Transactions Committee. He is conversant in Spanish and Hebrew.

Jack Langworthy, Managing Director, Covington Associates http://www.covingtonassociates.com

Jack joined Covington Associates in 2010 as head of its healthcare information technology practice. During his career, he has led more than 50 buy/sell-side and corporate finance transactions ranging in size from $5M – $450M.

Jack previously headed the HIT and services practices for Healthios, a Chicago-based firm. Prior to Healthios, he was founder of TechCap Advisors. Jack has also been a senior banker in the M&A and corporate finance groups of Banc of America Securities; a member of IBM’s corporate business development group; and a founding member of Fireworks Partners, IBM’s internal venture capital group.

Jack has a Bachelor of Arts and JD from the University of Denver and its College of Law and a SM from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Moderator: Praveen Bansal, M.S, CEO, TFC BioSciences

Praveen Bansal is the Founder and CEO of TFC BioSciences, Inc., a Worcester-based life sciences company with a mission to develop and commercialize smart tools for drug discovery. Prior to founding TFC BioSciences, she served as the Program Manager for the ADME/Tox market segment at Tecan, Inc., responsible for the development and global commercialization of fully validated, automated ADME/Tox platform solutions. She also held multiple positions at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in drug discovery and development. Prior to Millennium, she was involved with oncology target research at ImmunoGen.

Praveen received her M.S. in Immunology and Preventive Medicine from Iowa State University, and an M.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a Bachelors in Pharmacy from the College of Pharmacy, Indore, India.

Meeting Location: : Constant Contact, Inc., 1601 Trapelo Rd., 3^RD Floor, The Great Room, Waltham, MA (Exit 28B, I-95/Route 128) PRE-MEETING Pay-as-you-go DINNER at 5:15 PM (sharp) at Bertucci’s, Waltham.

Directions: http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant-contact/office-location-waltham.jsp

Reservations: ENET Constant Contact meetings are free to ENET members, $20 for non-members and $10 for students with a current university ID. No reservations are needed for the dinner. To expedite sign-in for the meeting, we ask that everyone -- members as well as non-members -- pre-register for the meeting online. Pre-registration is available until midnight the day before the meeting. If you cannot pre-register, you are welcome to register at the door.