Investor Spotlight: Atlanta’s Ashish Mistry

Ashish Mistry is a consummate behind the scenes, make-things-happen guy in the Atlanta technology community.

To describe Mistry as just an entrepreneur would be a gross understatement. Behind the youthful demeanor lies a shrewd operator and tough competitor.

Mistry’s career in the technology sector began in IT services. As a newly minted graduate of Emory University, he co-founded his first startup, Virtex Networks, a remote management network services company, in the late 1990s. The venture-funded company was acquired by Leapfrog Services in 2001…back when Eric Schmidt was still chairman and CEO of Novell.

He joined the AirDefense team thereafter learning from the best: serial entrepreneur and investor Jay Chaudhry. Chaudhry was the company’s CEO and chairman at the time and according to Mistry, he “sat outside the chairman’s door” and “did what it took” which meant building out the company’s inside sales team and sales channel in Asia over several years. AirDefense is now part of Motorola Solutions.

Mistry went on to two tours as Entrepreneur in Residence at ATDC.

Today, he is managing partner of BLH Venture Partners, a private fund that invests in early stage technology companies with a focus on startups in ecommerce, SaaS, digital media and managed services. Portfolio companies include Acumen Brands, Better Cloud, KontrolFreek, Ionic Security, TripLingo and Vocalocity.

The last 12 months have been particularly eventful for the firm. Portfolio companies Acumen Brands, BetterCloud and Ionic Security have all raised significant rounds of funding. The firm’s very first investment Vocalocity announced its acquisition by Vonage for $130 million in October.

Mistry’s characterization of BLH: “We’re not just entrepreneur-friendly, we’re entrepreneurs who happen to run a business that invests in other entrepreneurs.”

When not handling BLH matters, Mistry can be found fulfilling his other professional responsibility as CEO of KontrolFreek, a red-hot ecommerce company that manufactures and sell accessories in the console gaming industry. Despite his already full schedule, Mistry still spends 50 percent of his time with KontrolFreek. According to Mistry: “It keeps me close to the operations and many of the ecommerce investment opportunities come from my role as the CEO of KontrolFreek.”

This post originally appeared on Venture Atlanta.

Softbank’s Joe Medved: Diligence Is For Entrepreneurs Too

The national VC investors and angels who spoke at Everywhere Else Cincinnati loved the concept of talking to and educating entrepreneurs from everywhere else. In the months leading up to Everywhere Else Cincinnati, we fielded a lot of emails from investors asking about pitch contests and deal flow. Joe Medved joined Blair Garrou (Mercury Fund), Mark Hasebroock (Dundee Venture Capital), Mark Richey (West Capital Advisors/Draper), and Bob Coy (Cincy Tech) on the stage at one point or another during the conference to help educate early stage startups and entrepreneurs. The general consensus was if entrepreneurs are more in tune with the investor community, a lot of time will be saved.

Medved took that idea to the extreme by cramming down probably an entire college course worth of entrepreneurial content into a 30 minute talk and equally robust slides.

Our Managing Editor Monica Selby already covered the truth about getting VC attention, almost immediately after Medved left the stage.

Medved’s presentation was filled with important information. Equally as important as getting VC attention is the fact that due diligence is just as important for the startup as it is for the investor. Too many times startups are so excited about getting a “yes,” they are willing to take money from anyone.

Entrepreneurs need to make sure that the investor is the right fit for their startup. Does the startup see eye to eye with the investor? Does the investor bring value to the startup outside of just money? Taking on an investor is a partnership almost like a marriage. Just as a marriage, it may take a while to get into but it’s a lot harder to get out of. In that respect it’s even harder to get an investor out than it is to get divorced.

Medved offers these tips for doing due diligence on your investors:

References! Speak to entrepreneurs the investor has backed before, including those who have crushed it and been crushed.
– Is there healthy engagement with the investor? And their team?
– Where can they help & what types of board members complement them?
Leverage their network for customer references
– On top of your existing customer references, ask to pitch your business to potential customers in their network
Follow on investments
– If they’ll follow, how frequently do they?
– How much would they reserve?
If you’re working with a fund what is their capital health
– What percentage of their fund is invested and reserved
– If they’re raising soon, is your individual lead in good standing?

All of these points are very important to a startup. As painful as it may be for your pocketbook or bank account or even your startup, if the answers to these questions aren’t comfortable for your team, product and startup you may need to look for another investor.

Follow Joe Medved on Twitter @joevc

Check out more coverage from Everywhere Else Cincinnati here.

West Capital Advisor and Draper Triangle’s Mark Richey Added To Everywhere Else Cincinnati!

With less than 2 weeks to go for Everywhere Else Cincinnati, we’re still letting speakers out of the bag. Everywhere Else Cincinnati is shaping up to be the destination conference for startups everywhere else. The conference will feature 30 great startup and investor speakers from across the country. We’ve kept ticket prices low to allow even the most bootstrapped startups from everywhere else the opportunity to afford and attend a major startup conference.

We are pleased to announce that Mark Richey, Venture Partner at Draper Triangle Ventures and Managing Director/Founder at West Capital Advisors, will be one of our featured keynote speakers during the Everywhere Else Conference September, 29th through October, 1st in Cincinnati Ohio.

Mark is an experienced technologist, executive, founder, and private equity investor. Most recently, he served as a Managing Director in Draper Triangle Ventures, an early stage venture fund and affiliate of the Draper Network of funds headed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Menlo Park, CA. Mark maintains a relationship with Draper Triangle in the role of Venture Partner.

Mark has been involved in many entrepreneurial ventures. Mark founded Synchrony Communications in 1997 raising $38 million in funding from leading VCs and strategic investors, including Charles River Ventures, APAX Partners and GE Equity. He grew the company to a size of more than 130 employees in four cities serving over 80 customers, including Cincinnati Bell, Bank of America, and Proctor & Gamble. In prior years Mark served in management roles with a series of venture backed Silicon Valley companies, including Gain Technology (sold to Sybase), Siebel Systems (IPO), and Genesys Telecommunications (IPO). After graduate school he worked in management consulting with Theodore Barry & Associates (Los Angeles). Mark began his career as a software engineer with Cincom Systems (Cincinnati).

Mark holds an M.B.A. from The Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and a BS Systems Analysis from Miami University. He currently serves as an observer on the boards of Thinkvine, Oversight Systems, and CardioInsight, the advisory board of Priority Consult (division of Mayfield Spine Clinic), and the TechColumbus Investment Committee. Mark is a past member of the Business Advisory Council of Miami University’s Richard T. Farmer School of Business Administration.

You can get attendee tickets or register for a Startup Avenue booth below. For more info on the conference visit eecincinnati.com

Sell Tickets Online through Eventbrite

The Startup Fred Wilson And Union Square Ventures Would Back Right Now

The startup and venture capital world breathed a sigh of relief earlier this month when New York based venture capitalist, blogger extraordinaire and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, announced he was investing in Coinbase a startup that helps facilitate Bitcoin transactions. Sure Bitcoin is a hot commodity these days, just ask Ashton Kutcher, but there was more to it than that.

For many, Wilson’s investment in Coinbase was one of those big “signaling issues”. As most know, Wilson has been in a two year slump with investments while he tried to figure out what the next big thing was.

His firm, Union Square Ventures, did just fine with investments and made some great bets during Wilson’s cool period.

So what’s next more Bitcoin startups? Wilson has always been one to go ahead of the curve, so undoubtedly whatever he invests in next will go to that record. Wilson just saw an exit with Tumblr, for which he was an early investor. Some of their other great investments include Boxee, Turntable.fm, Twitter, Twilio and countless others.

Regardless of what’s actually in the pipeline, we can tell you for certain, if you read Wilson’s personal blog, avc.com, if you’ve got a team of college graduates who’ve developed the next thing that’s going to stop Google, and big hint here’s it’s not Bing, Wilson would go all in.

In a tribute to his daughter Jess who just graduated from College earlier this week, Wilson acknowledges the fact that he and USV often bet on college drop outs but he writes;

“Dropping out of college is all the rage today in startup land (even dropping out of high school). And when it comes to our business, we really do not care if someone went to or graduated from college. We have funded many college dropouts and will continue to.

But there is also something to finishing something you started. ”

So just to be clear, Wilson will still bet on dropouts but I’m willing to bet a college graduate team may have a special place in his heart these days.

As for what’s stopping Google, Wilson also wrote a short, sweet and to the point post called “Running the table”. In the post he talks about how Microsoft “ran the table” with desktop computing, Apple did it with mobile computing and Facebook did it with social networking. That was until Apple and the internet stopped Microsoft and Twitter stopped Facebook.

As for Google, Google is trying to run the table with the “entire fucking internet” and Wilson wants to know “Who Will Stop Google”.

So if you’ve got a college graduate team ready to stop Google, you better get that deck in front of Wilson.

Read Wilson’s blog avc.com daily. Got that startup ready, make sure your business plan submission includes a clear description of your operations and current progress and take it on over to Union Square Ventures, 915 Broadway, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10010, make it interesting, Wilson’s a busy go.

Here are Wilson’s Venture Capital Do’s & Dont’s

Ready For Weed Startups? Conference Coming To New York

With two states adopting laws around the recreational use of marijuana and more states adopting laws for medical marijuana it’s just a matter of time before weed startups start cropping up (no pun intended). Cannabis industry trade publication has announced a business seminar for investors and entrepreneurs eager to learn about the business of marijuana.

The event will be held on March 14th at The Lofts At Prince (177 Prince Street Penthouse in New York City). The seminar runs from 6:00pm until 10:15pm and features a panel of industry experts and time for networking.

Chris Walsh, Editor of MJJ Business Daily; Tripp Keber, Medical Marijuana Inc; Jessica Billingsley co-founder, MJ Freeway Software Solutions; and Eric Williams, President, CT Medical Cannabis Alliance, will all speak on the latest trends and industry data.

There will also be four sessions:

Session #1. New Financial & Business Benchmark Data for the Cannabis Industry

Session #2. Investing Advisory on the Cannabis Industry

Session #3. Typical Cannabis Business Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Session #4. Tri-State Area Cannabis Business Opportunities & Regulatory Outlook

MJJ Business Daily was launched in 2011 with offices in Denver Colorado and Providence Rhode Island.

Tickets for the event are $149 in advance and $199 at the door. MJJ Business Daily warns that the event is for serious investors and entrepreneurs and not for patients or consumers.

For more information or tickets visit this site.