Meeting Overview:

Raising money is one of the most critical and time consuming tasks for entrepreneurs, when starting and growing a company. Angels and VCs prefer to invest in startups with strong management teams, sizeable defined markets, and tested products, with sales a plus. Startups are usually lacking in one or more areas, so many exceptions are allowed. On Tuesday, April 4, at The Forefront Center in Waltham, you will learn about raising money to build and grow your company from an Angel Investor, Venture Capitalist (VC), and an Entrepreneur who has done it successfully. Our panelists, with backgrounds in raising and investing money, and as entrepreneurs, will provide point-counterpoint. The panel will discuss investment criteria, answer all your questions, and tell you what domains are hot, and not.

Panel:

• Angel: Richard Morley, The Breakfast Club, www.barn.org

• VC: Michael Greeley, IDG Ventures, www.IDGventures.com

• CEO: Ric Fulop, A123Systems, Inc. www.A123Systems.com

Meeting Site and Cost:

• 5:15 PM Pre-meeting Dinner
  Bertucci's Restaurant
  475 Winter St.,(exit 27B off Route 128), Waltham, MA ("pay-as-you-go")

• 7:00 - 10:00PM Meeting Presentation
  Forefront Conference Center
  404 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA

• There is a $20.00 fee, non ENET members.

  No reservations are necessary for either the meeting or dinner

  Click here for directions and a map to the dinner and meeting

Richard Morley ([email protected]) is co-founder of the Breakfast Club, an ad hoc group of over 20 Angel investors on the east coast that started out with two people and then became a core group of four. Dick says, "Angels are not Venture Capitalists. We only invest our own or our wives money." Most investments are under $100,000 with an eye towards the raw startup. Dick has invested in over 70 high-tech startup companies, and tends to take on the role of a well-connected silent investor with minimal interaction following an investment decision. His analysis is primarily technical as opposed to contractual or equity. His primary interest is to follow and meet the founders and people once in their making an investment decision. Dick will talk about his experiences, returns and some of the problems he has encountered. He does not monitor his investments very well, and says, "I'm just as surprised as they are when they make it." He will try to explain the clubs' rationale for existence. Angel investment seems to be behavior driven, rather than process driven.

Dick is best known as the father of the programmable controller. He is also a serial entrepreneur with considerable success in the founding of high-tech companies, and has been doing this for more than three decades. He is the recipient of the Franklin Institute's prestigious Howard N. Potts award, and an inductee of the Automation Hall of Fame. He holds more than 20 patents. The Breakfast Club has invested in more than a hundred startups in New England.

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Michael Greeley ([email protected]) founded the IDG Ventures Boston office in 2001, where he serves as a General Partner. Michael brings over 15 years of early and later-stage investment experience to IDG Ventures.Earlier, at Polaris Venture Partners, he focused on both early and later stage financings for emerging growth companies. Michael served for five years as Senior Vice President and Founding Partner of GCC Investments, a successful $200 million private equity fund. He was a Vice President at Wasserstein Perella & Co., an international merchant bank with a $1.0 billion private equity fund. During his five-year tenure, he gained experience in both domestic and international acquisitions, restructurings and management buyouts. Additionally, Michael was a member of the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Morgan Stanley & Co. and was associated with the Leveraged Buyout Group of Credit Suisse First Boston.

Michael currently serves on the boards of BlueTarp, MicroCHIPS, Protein Forest, VidSys, the New England Venture Capital Association, and is a member of the Executive Business Advisory Council for Mass General Hospital for Children, and trustee of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Previously, he served on the Boards of a number of public and private companies including Global TeleSystems Group (NASDAQ: GTSG), El Sitio International (NASDAQ: LCTO), MotherNature.com (NASDAQ: MTHR), Crescent Communications (acquired by Clear Channel), Fleetcor Technologies, where he also served as interim CEO, and American Capital Access. He received a BA with honors in Chemistry from Williams College, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

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Ric Fulop (www.A123Systems.com) co-founded A123Systems in 2001, and is VP of Business Development & Marketing. Ric is an entrepreneur with extensive knowledge of multiple technology sectors. In addition, he has founded six venture capital financed companies that raised over $140 million in energy storage, software, semiconductors and wireless communications. Among the various investors he has raised capital from are Sequoia Capital, NorthBridge Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley, Qualcomm, General Electric, Motorola, Cox, Adelphia, Credit Suisse, Cisco, Intel, Putnam, Venrock Associates, Highland Capital Partners, YankeeTek Ventures and Fidelity Ventures.

A123Systems has developed a new generation of Lithium-Ion batteries that uses proprietary nanoscale electrode technology to achieve unprecedented levels of power, safety and life. Building on research initiated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, A123Systems' batteries offer many major advantages over other rechargeable battery chemistries. The company headquarters are in Watertown, MA (US) where it has state of the art R&D and pilot production facilities. In addition A123Systems has manufacturing operations in the United States, China, Korea, and Taiwan with capacity greater than 5 million batteries a year. Ric is a Sloan Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

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Les Brown ([email protected]) is a private investor, and CEO & President of Brown & Burstein, Lexington-based management advisors to VC firms, Boards of Directors, CEOs and senior executives of technology-based companies. Les is also an interim CEO for startups and turnarounds, and as a company doctor rapidly resolves business and technology issues in company performance, markets, management, and technology implementation. He is a serial entrepreneur, co-founded three technology-based companies, was instrumental in starting and mentoring many other businesses, and is now working on another medical device startup.

Les has over 30 years of multidisciplinary experience, and has commercialized $250 million of successful products and services in the fields of medical devices, photonics, communications, sensors, Internet, mechanics, and more. He earned advanced degrees in engineering and business, and has been an invited speaker and moderator at many conferences, seminars, and universities. Les is a Fellow of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); was co-founder and for five years Chair of the Boston Entrepreneurs' Network, now in its sixteenth year; and was past Chair of the 11,000-member IEEE Boston Section (www.ieeeBoston.org).

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