Speaker:PeterWolken10-11-06
From wiki
| Peter Wolken, Venture Capitalist |
- Watch Mr. Wolken's Lecture, "Investing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship"
- Review Mr. Wolken's accompanying slides
Biography
Peter has been a successful venture capitalist for more than 25 years. His long and successful venture capital and operating experience enables him to quickly evaluate emerging information technologies. Peter founded (1982) and was a General Partner at Associated Venture Investors (AVI), which managed $140M across three funds. AVI specialized in seed and early-stage investments in information technology companies positioned for high growth. AVI's financial performance ranks among the highest in the venture capital industry.
While at AVI, Peter invested in and helped build many successful start-ups, including Extreme Networks (one of 1999's top performing IPOs), PLX Technology, Inverse Network Technology (acquired by Visual Networks), Grand Junction Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems), Full Time Software (acquired by Legato Systems), AccelGraphics (acquired by Evans & Sutherland) and Network Peripherals (one of 1994's top performing IPOs). Prior to AVI, Peter was a General Partner at Page Mill Partners, which was a seed and early-round investor in several successful companies, including Software Publishing Corporation, 3Com Corporation, Apple Computer and ASK Computer Systems.
An engineer by training, Peter co-founded and was VP of Sales at Cobilt, a semiconductor equipment firm that later merged into Computervision Corporation. Peter has more than twenty years of operating experience working in the electronics industry for RCA, General Electric, Beckman Instruments, Electroglas and Etec, which was acquired by Applied Materials. Peter received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters degree in International Marketing from Thunderbird The Garvin School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona.
Lecture Summary: Investing in Innovation & Entrepreneurship (October 9, 2006)
A 1958 graduate of UC Berkeley, Mr. Wolken has a very impressive track record having invested a total of 40M in his career and earned total returns of over $654 M. The following are some of the most important highlights from his presentation:
What is the Vision that will succeed?
- There will be many and some will be better than others
- Focus on large, underserved markets
- Find an unfair advantage
- Build a “world-class” team
- Plan for this to be a long-term project
What do Venture Capitalists want?
- World-class teams
- Innovative technology
- Serve market driven needs
- Solutions for Pain
- Aggressive marketing plans
- Low burn rates
- Profitability within 3 years
- Positive Cash flow shortly thereafter
Some Technology Areas of Interest:
- Semiconductors – Fabless IC Design
- Semiconductor Production Equipment
- Enterprise Software
- Wireless Communications
- Security Software
- Networking Infrastructure
- Consumer web-based applications- SaaS
- Energy and Green Technologies