The Ultimate Investor Meeting Toolkit

This post is part of the Hyde Park Angels Entrepreneurial Education Series, which brings together successful, influential entrepreneurs and investors to teach entrepreneurs everything they need to know about early-stage investment through events, articles, videos, and more. If you are interested in learning more about raising a round, save the date for “Early Stage Investment 101” on June 17.

At the launch of the Hyde Park Angels Entrepreneurial Education Series, “Are You Ready to Raise,” Genevieve Thiers — the brains behind Sittercity and ContactKarma, outlined the five documents every entrepreneur needs to prepare for an investor meeting (and to keep themselves on track). She also generously promised to share her own templates. And here they are!

These are proven templates from a successful founder for building the ultimate investor meeting toolkit:

1. Executive Summary
2. Pitch Deck
3. Competitive Overview
4. 3 Year Financial Projections
5. Cap Table and Model

For more guidance and wisdom from top-tier entrepreneurs and investors like Genevieve, watch the full recording of “Are You Ready to Raise,” read the Entrepreneurial Education Series program, and check out our latest post on building the perfect pitch deck.

New HPA Portfolio Company, SimpleMills.com

HPA has been busy.  We have done a lot of follow on rounds of existing portfolio companies recently but we are always looking for new deals.  We were lucky to find Simple Mills.

Simple Mills won the Ed Kaplan New Venture Challenge at Chicago Booth this year, along with RoomVa.   What are they?  They are the best tasting most delightful gluten free, low glycemic muffin mix that you will ever taste.  Diabetics can eat them.  They are amazingly simple to bake at home.  We loved the leadership team of Simple Mills but I think it’s safe to say HPA enjoyed eating their muffins in the diligence process just as much!

Most gluten free mixes are full of sugar.  Most of them taste like wallpaper and are heavy.  Simple Mills allows you to get all the flavor and texture that you are used to, but still avoid gluten and sugar.  They are light on the palate.  Many HPA members are eating them instead of traditional muffins because they taste so good and are better for you than regular muffin mixes.

Since we started talking to them, they rolled out two new products.  Cookies and flatbread.  Find them in these stores, or order them on Amazon.  If your local store doesn’t carry them, tell the manager to order them!  They are that good.

 

 

YCharts Rolls Out New Features

 

YCharts has a free version of its product.  But if you upgrade and pay for certain versions, it gets really powerful.

The YCharts Professional platform continues to improve which is increasing our ability sell into the market.  Below are the notable updates:

• New Dashboard
• Dow Jones News
• Alert improvements
• Upgraded Stock Screener
• Numerous stock chart improvements
• Event Calendar
• ETF Coverage
• Mutual Fund Coverage coming later this year
• Corporate Announcement feed coming later this year

Give it a try.  Or, better yet, tell your friends that are employed as wealth managers or RIA’s about YCharts.

 

Like Us On Facebook; Follow us on Twitter

We haven’t been Captain Obvious about social media at Hyde Park Angels, but we have social media accounts.  We would love to interact with you on Twitter or Facebook.  Follow us on Twitter and “Like” our Facebook page.

We use each platform to help educate the community on the nature of startups, the happenings in the tech world, and to educate investors about how to invest in startups.

We also talk about things going on with our portfolio companies.  HPA has invested in a diverse set of companies that are disrupting their industries.  If you want to be on the bleeding edge of ideas, learning about our companies is a great way to inform yourself.

 

As always, we appreciate introductions for our portfolio companies to potential customers.  Check them out.  They are in financial services, agriculture, big data, marketing, medicine, consumer products, education, government services, logistics, parking, weight loss, mobile tech, wearable tech, and web security.   There is something there for everyone.

If you have a company you think we will be interested in, please review our criteria and then submit your deal.  One of our associates will contact you once you have applied.

 

 

Are You A Curious Person? Want to Learn About Cutting Edge Battery Technology?

Hyde Park Angels is partnering with The American Chemical Society’s Chicago Section  to sponsor a big conference on June 19, 2014.  Sign up here.

The Chicago Section ACS has an action-packed program with a scientific focus on battery research at Argonne’s Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR). The main event is a panel discussion led by JCESR Director Dr. George Crabtree, and is followed by Argonne battery researchers Dr. Karena Chapman and Dr. Lynn Trahey. The talks will be capped by Mil Ovan, CMO at Navitas – a corporate partner that develops Argonne’s exciting scientific discoveries into real-world commercial products. Our poster session will showcase battery and other clean energy research at universities and startup enterprises from greater Chicagoland. Entrepreneurs and investors are welcome.

Here is the schedule.  The Argonne Tour is already sold out.  The event takes place at Bolingbrook Country Club.

• 5:00 – 6:30 Social Hour with cash bar and Poster Session
• 6:30 – 7:30 Dinner (see MENU below)
• 7:30 –   General Meeting
  • Dr. Josh Kurutz, Chicago ACS Chair: Welcome
  • Susan Shih, Distinguished Service Award comittee chair: Presentation of the Distinguished Service Award to Frank Jarzembowski
  • Presentation of Awards to 50- and 60-year Members
  • Dr. Crabtree: “JCESR’s New Paradigm for Battery R&D” – One Year Later” (~30 min)
  • Dr. Chapman: “Solvation Structure of Battery Electrolytes from High-energy Hard X-rays” (~10 min)
  • Dr. Trahey: “In Situ Imaging of Battery Materials at APS”. (~10 min)
  • Mr. Ovan: “Partnering With Argonne to Develop Tomorrow’s Commercial Batteries”. (~10 min)

ABSTRACT (Dr. Crabtree)

The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) develops transformational concepts and technologies for portable electricity storage for transportation and stationary electric storage for the electricity grid.   JCESR looks beyond today’s Li-ion technology to innovative next generation energy storage materials and phenomena to achieve factors of five higher performance and lower cost.   These aggressive targets are essential to enable next generation energy technologies such as wide deployment of electric vehicles, integration of wind and solar generation on the grid, and designer microgrids tailored to serve local needs. 

JCESR will leave three legacies:

1. a library of fundamental science of the materials and phenomena of energy storage at atomic and molecular levels,
2. transformational prototypes at the research and proof-of-concept stages for transportation and the grid, and
3. a new paradigm for battery research that integrates discovery science, battery design, research prototyping and manufacturing collaboration in a single highly interactive organization.

JCESR’s new paradigm will significantly accelerate the pace of discovery and innovation and shorten the time from conception to commercialization for next generation batteries.

JCESR’s research progress and future directions will be highlighted.

ABSTRACT (Dr. Chapman)
My talk will describe our recent efforts to evaluate ion solvation in electrolytes being developed for high capacity energy storage technologies, beyond Li-ion batteries.  In batteries, solvation of the working ion in an electrolyte mediates critical phenomena including ion mobility, chemical reactions, solubility and ion transfer to electrodes. We use pair distribution function (PDF) methods to recover atomic scale structural information as the distribution of all atom-atom distances within the whole system and have developed a new analytical approach to separate the contributions from cation and anion solvation.

ABSTRACT (Dr. Trahey)
Adoption of the next generation of anode and cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries is hindered due to both chemical and physical degradation of the materials during long term battery cycling. This talk will highlight the ways that advanced imaging techniques utilizing hard X-rays are providing clearer “pictures” of the complex underlying degradation processes.

A lot of people in the angel world are interested in more than just “apps”.  This is a great chance to learn more about hard science, and interact with the scientists that make it happen.

Moxie Jean’s Sharon Schneider on Chicago Tonight: Talking Bro Culture in Tech

Moxie Jean CEO and founder Sharon Schneider was recently on a local television program, Chicago Tonight. The issue was the TechWeek gaffe that was demeaning to women. Sharon articulates the issue extremely well, and if you watch the video you can see why HPA is an investor in her company.

HPA has never focused on gender. We have many women in leadership roles within our organization. Karin O Connor is our managing director and will be stepping down in July. Our group has a large percentage of females that are members. We have backed female lead companies (Brilliant, MoxieJean, Dabble, Supply Vision) Many of our student associates are women.

Why did this happen? Because they were all really damn good.

Chicago is different than other places in tech. We value everyone. HPA is the same. We care about ideas and building great companies. There are a bunch in our portfolio.

The best thing you can do if you want to support women in tech is become a customer of one of their companies. Click the links to their websites and start using their products today. Tell your friends. The more success they have, the more success all women in tech will have.

InContext Solutions Rolls Out New Software

InContext Solutions is a cutting edge consumer products research company. They created a virtual way for brands to test products. What’s really interesting is they are able to capture pure economics, but also behavioral economic patterns with their software.

“The virtual store research we complete allows us to collect both behavioral and attitudinal metrics that reflect what shoppers purchase and why they purchase it,” said InContext Solutions’ chief research office, Rich Scamehorn.

Scamehorn added: “Our research is extremely accurate and helps retailers understand why they should, or shouldn’t, arrange items in a certain way or install another end display before they actually take the time, money and effort to move forward with ineffective in-store techniques.”

InContext greatly reduces the cost and risk of marketing both new and old products in the store.

YCharts Has a New Dashboard

Ycharts, the world’s best financial portal on the web has a new dashboard they rolled out this week.

Ycharts continues to build out the most incredible financial data set for research anywhere. 395,079,047 financial data points in the system, 11,210,000 charts with history dating back as far as 1882, and 41,078,046 views of our charts across the web in 2013. Ycharts helps people make better decisions.

Check them out at ycharts.com

See the Logistical Future With Supply Vision

Supply Vision has been an HPA portfolio company for the last two years now.  Recently Amanda Bohl was promoted to the CEO role.   She is taking the company to new heights.  It’s the fourth HPA backed company that has a female CEO.  HPA recently closed another financing round with them.  The deal was lead by Karin O Connor.

Supply Vision is a cloud based developer of logistical products for freight forwarders and truck brokers. Their TMS, WMS and Portal applications bring value to everyone in the supply chain.  From the company owner to the forklift operator, the system offers features, security and services to segment and deploy across North America.

They are adding customers daily.  Recently they hired a new Business Develoment rep and in early June they will be moving their offices to Foley and Lardner’s Catapult Incubator.

HPA Helps Land A Big One With Fishidy

HPA has a new portfolio company, Fishidy. It’s the first time HPA has participated in funding a Wisconsin based company. We are excited about that because there are great things happening in Wisconsin. Fishidy is based in Madison, Wisconsin.  Paul Budak lead the deal for HPA. Paul says, “It’s a huge market and it’s untapped from a technology standpoint.”  People spend more money on fishing than they do on golf.  It’s a massive industry.

Brian Jensen is the CEO of Fishidy.  He is an avid fisherman, and came up with the idea.  He  was previously an executive at GeoDecisions, a leading Geographic Information Systems (GIS) company.  He likes to say that Google Maps can get you from your home to the fishing hole, but Fishidy takes you from the boat launch to where the fish are biting.

Download the app for your iPhone, or from Google ($GOOG) Play.

Here is a video on how Fishidy works. It’s a tremendous app for anyone that goes fishing. It increases your odds of landing the big one.  Share photos and tips with friends.  Learn from other fisherman about new techniques and what they are using to catch fish.

Not only does it provide great information, but here is how you can use Fishidy to get in depth analysis about where you are fishing.

Related articles

• Start-ups compete to pitch to venture capitalists
• Wisconsin Startup Fishidy Wins Chance to Pitch Silicon Valley VCs
• Tom Still: Co-investing trend in Wisconsin can help startups in search for money
• Prominent Fishing Resources Share Common Goals – More Knowledge, More Fish