Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Insights and Opinions: Top 10 Attributes of Successful VC Investments

For today's Insights & Opinions section, we're sharing a brief piece that Jeff Cohn, a well known consultant to angel and venture investors in town, and currently a venture consultant to MHS Capital--and who was previously Investment Screening Director for the Tech Coast Angels--wrote about his view of Southern California's current VC investment market in his blog, which he's let us repost here.

Contrary to the common belief that Southern California "should be an easy place to raise money" with all of its' entertainment and real estate wealth, it is a very difficult place to raise Venture Capital for technology start-ups. The bulk of all professional Venture Capital is managed out of offices based in Silicon Valley and most of these fund managers like to invest close to home. To make matters even more difficult almost 90% of VCs based in SoCal in 1999 are now gone while our beachhead entertainment companies have a terrible track record at making early stage investments and now typically wait to invest in later rounds.

So how does an entrepreneur based in SoCal get the attention of VC funds today?

Read Jeff's full list in our Insights and Opinions section.

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