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My journey into CTAN was kind of a unique one, it was all about timing.
So, I have a background in angel investing, so I was an angel investor in
Las Vegas,
that helped a little bit,
but then during my time in the MBA, I spent a lot of time
volunteering with CTAN, getting to know the angel investors there,
and helping doing some diligence work and working with companies.
So when it came time to graduate, I was looking for -- I know I didn't want to leave
Austin and I know i didn't want to go into any kind of
a big corporate type of a job, I wanted to stay in what I was doing all through the MBA program
program already.
And, so it was a kind of a perfect time with the last part-time executive director was
peeling off to do his own venture capital firm and
they were looking to hire a full-time individual. Because I had already built those
relationships, because I had already done a lot of work with CTAN in the past,
it was just kind of a right place, right time.
So, CTAN was started back in 2006 by Jamie Rhodes, and Jamie Rhodes is
an ecosystem evangelist. He's been
an angel investor for a long time, he's an entrepreneur
and he saw a need in Austin which was not being filled which was
we have a lot of angel activity and we certainly have a lot of entrepreneurial activity, but
there's no organized
angel network.
So one of things I love about entrepreneurs is they're hungry. They're
hungry they want to grow their business and they want to learn as much as they
can and
the they're willing to knock down walls.
But at the same time oftentimes they don't know what they don't know
and that's where
angels really kind of provided the glue to help them continue to grow. We add
lot of value to the network because we provide more than just capital. Angels are
really important to entrepreneurs because they become
mentors and they help that company grow besides just the captial they provide. We
invest in multiple different sectors: lifesciences, mobile, social, food
and beverage...
It's more about we're investing in entrepreneurs, we're investing in entrepreneurs
that are
growing their company and being active about kind of meeting the --
delivering on the things that they said they're going to deliver on.
Those are the companies we're really investing in.
The real value in getting angels together to invest together through a
a vehicle like CTAN is to be able to syndicate deals
So, they're able to spread their investments and take more portfolio approach to investing by
getting together with a group.
That's one value, but dot the second very important value is
more eyeballs on companies.
So and those eyeballs are to either help, you know, kind of
vet the deal in see, hey,
you know, where are the places that this company needs to really look out for or
needs to improve,
but then again also, post investment, it's more eyeballs to help that company
continue to grow and make connections in and kind of
group resources around helping entrepreneurs.
So the best way for an entrepreneur to approach CTAN is to cometo one of our office
hours events. We started these in 2012 and the main reason we did them
is to be
open, to open our doors to entrepreneurs.
So if you're an entrepreneur looking for seed capital anywhere from a hundred
thousand to a million, even up to two million,
you ought to come to our office hours events. We grabbed fifteen to
twenty of our investors, we come and sit at a table, and we allow any entrepreneur
that RSVPs for the event to have one-on-one conversations
with our investors. Building startup teams is tough -- it's tough to find
co-founders that you gel with, that you all bring different things to the table...
If I were goingto give advice to entrepreneurs, I'd say get out of your comfort zone.
Go to places that you don't normally go.
So, in the business school when I was there, we started thing called
Texas Venture Labs and that's been really impactful. I was one of the co-founders of Texas Venture Labs and
the reason why was passionate about it is because it wasn't just a business
school. We broke down the barriers on campus, we went to the engineering
school, we went to the law school, went to the computer science
department. And we kind of got all these different individuals that were all interested
in entrepreneurship
and got them in a room
talking about things, looking at things from different angles.
So, what I would tell entrepreneurs is follow that same model, don't just talk to a bunch of
MBAs, don't just talk to a bunch of engineers.
Go to events, go to places were you can meet people with different backgrounds
and really embrace and listen to what they're saying.
So, the one thing that I'd say that I wish that I knew way back when I bought my
first 7-11,
and operated that, to now where I'm at?,
Is that it's okay make mistakes. In fact, it's actually really good to make
mistakes. I came out, I was an entrepreneur
fresh out of college, I bought my first store, I ran that
24-7. I mean I was at my store 80 to 100 hours a week.
And i want to do everything perfect, because i'd just got my degree, now
I knew everything there was to know about business and so I needed to make sure I
didn't make any mistakes.
And if I were to go back and talk to that old Jeff and say, you know, hey, here's some
things I've learned, it would be it's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to learn from
those mistakes, in fact you might learn as much from some of your mistakes
as you do you from some of your successes.
You still learn from your successes, so don't void yourself of having
successes, but you learn from both and you can learn equally from the mistakes.