"Exit Strategies - Cashing In"

Presentations

Meeting Overview:

Creating a business so that it will become well positioned to be acquired is a smart plan and a very well-regarded business model that is highly attractive to investors. Mergers and acquisitions are the dominant path to liquidity for most companies. Being able to plan for this exit requires market and business insight and a path for technical accomplishment that will be compelling to leading commercial partners as acquirers. Tonight our speakers will talk about what companies have done early on to "position" for their exit and how they appealed to the right buyer. They will emphasize the preparation, structuring, and negotiations and how to make the best possible deal.

Panel:

Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer & Updegrove www.gesmer.com

Andy has a broad range of experience in representing both mature and emerging high technology companies. He has advised many hundreds of startup companies with respect to their strategic and legal needs, assisting them in their progress from a concept to a mature company. He has represented mature companies in financings, mergers and acquisitions, the redeployment of services and assets onto the Internet, and complex intellectual property matters. Since 1988, he has represented and helped structure more than 80 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia, including some of the largest standard setting organizations in the world.

His awards include being recognized as: one of the top 100 attorneys in Massachusetts, a MHT �Mass All and one of the "Best VC Lawyers" in Boston by the Digital Industry News. He was the sole representative of the consortium community to be appointed as a member of the United States National Standards Strategy Committee. He received the 2005 President�s Award for Journalism from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for his work at ConsortiumInfo.org and the Consortium Standards Journal.

Andy is a graduate of Yale University and the Cornell University Law School. He is a certified mediator, and is a member of both the Panel of Mediators of the Massachusetts Software and Internet Council and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center's List of Arbitrators, Mediators.
 

Chris Whalen, Vice President, Progress Partners www.progresspartners.com

Chris Whalen focuses on strategy, operations and technology.  Prior to Progress Partners, Chris was Managing Director of BCW Capital Partners, a boutique advisory firm he co-founded.  BCW focused on strategy consulting and advisory services for emerging companies as well as monetizing intellectual property assets for Fortune 50 companies such as NEC.  Prior to BCW, Chris was VP-Business Development for CatalystOne, an Oslo and Boston based strategy execution firm.  Chris helped build the company from three to 180 people in less than 18 months, raised series A and B capital, created key strategic alliances (CGEY, Cisco, Palm, Compaq, USOC, etc.), and opened offices in six countries.  Chris has spent his entire career in start up and entrepreneurial ventures in various executive capacities, raising capital, corporate growth and executing merger and acquisition activity.

Chris graduated from Assumption College and has an MBA from the Olin School of Management, Babson College.

Mike Grandinetti, Serial Entrepreneur

Mike Grandinetti�s life work is focused on starting and building globally successful venture � backed technology companies and in rapidly commercializing advanced technologies. Mike has spent 15 years as a senior executive at five venture-backed technology companies most notably in the capacities of Chief Marketing Officer often coupled with his joint appointment as VP of Business Development.

He helped lead the first four to successful exits for their investors. Taking Raptor Systems through a successful IPO and designation as the Fastest Growing Software Company in the US, and subsequent acquisition for roughly $250M, Connected Corp�s acquisition for $120M, Viewlogic�s designation as Deloitte Fast 50, IPO, and subsequent acquisition for roughly $500M, and was part of the senior executive team that merged Yantra with AT&T for 6X trailing revenues, or approximately $200M.

His most recent company, Virtual Iron Software, is a leading provider of data center virtualization and management solutions for Global 2000 enterprises and backed by world class venture and strategic investors including Matrix Partners, Highland Capital, Goldman Sachs, SAP Ventures, and Intel Capital who have invested $65M to date.

Mike holds a faculty appointment as Senior Lecturer in the Practice of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a long serving judge in the MIT $100K Global Entrepreneurship Competition. He sits on the Advisory Board of Flagship Ventures, Echelon Ventures, and SEED Capital (Denmark). Early in his career, he served as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company. Mike received his BS in Engineering, magna cum laude, from Rutgers, where he was named to the National Engineering Honor Society, and his MBA from Yale, where he was named the Jess Morrow Johns Memorial Scholar and was the recipient of the Procter and Gamble Marketing Leadership Award as well as a Yale Teaching Fellowship.

 

Mark A. Haddad, Associate, Foley Hoag, LLP www.foleyhoag.com

Mark is a business lawyer at Foley Hoag's Emerging Enterprise Center, representing a broad range of startup and early stage companies, primarily in the high tech, software, clean tech and life science industries. Mark advises clients on a wide variety of legal issues, including corporate formation, founder arrangements, seed, angel and venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions, as well as general corporate matters. He also represents venture capital and angel investors in portfolio investments with start-up and other companies. Mark is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has been listed in Boston Magazine as a Massachusetts Super Lawyers "Rising Star" for each of the last three years.

Meeting Organizer:

Lawrence C. Grumer, Managing Director, Technology Associates & Alliances (TAA) www.taacorp.com

TAA is a management advisory and investment company he founded in 1994 that commercializes technology for early-stage technology ventures and corporate spin-outs with go-to-market strategy, capital formation, business transition and profitable growth execution. His most recent venture which he co-founded was Elecsci Corp. a high tech start-up company with 24 patents issued/pending developing MEMS-based Energy Harvester devices that �couple� motion from the environment or from �walking around� and converts this to useful electrical energy. He has founded five companies. Larry held profit & loss technical, marketing and business management positions at Textron (Avco), Arthur D. Little, Marketing Dynamics, John Brown-Leesona, and Foster-Miller where he helped lead their business turn-around and introduced the SBIR program to them. For nearly a decade, he led the IEEE Boston Entrepreneurs' Network, as its Chairman and Vice Chairman. He serves on the Boards of Directors of corporate businesses and non-profit organizations. He was a founding Board member of a regional technology council and most recently created the EntreTech Forum www.entretechforum.org to address the commercialization of university and government technology. Larry is a Phase 2 proposal Grant Reviewer for the National Science Foundation. He received a BS in Engineering and an MBA with high distinction in International Marketing and Finance concentration from Northeastern University. He has held a Top Secret clearance.

Moderator:

Sandeep Baidwan, Project Manager, Investment Management, National Grid US Operations

Sandeep brings with him vast experience in the field of energy infrastructure project development, and project management from concept to implementation cycle. He has done investment planning of electric transmission and power generation projects totaling over $1B across the Midwestern footprint of U.S. He has led teams of engineers to develop generator interconnection projects aggregating over 1200 MW, primarily including wind and gas turbines for various developers across New England and New York. During his stint at National GridUSA, he has played a key role in developing a strategic plan for electric transmission infrastructure development for entire state of Rhode Island to meet the state�s power energy needs for next twenty years. He is also an active member of IEEE�s Energy society and serves on the advisory board of IEEE Entrepreneur�s network of Boston. He has also provided freelance consulting to Standard and Poor�s energy markets and trading division on energy congestion and energy price forecasting related issues and to Goldman Sachs on Wind Energy development in the US and Canadian markets. Sandeep holds a Master of Science degree from University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is also pursuing his fellowship in Advanced Studies in Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management.