Raising Venture Capital

This Course uses a fictional business to allow the learner to settle deeply into an entrepreneur’s shoes. Using the business as a realistic context, the learner is challenged to raise funding from a range of sources to launch the company, move the company successfully from a startup to a rapidly expanding “Phase 3” firm, and analyze the business’s innovative position in the market.

Private

Faculty

Prof. George Abe

Prof. George Abe

Professor

George Abe is a lecturer and Faculty Director of the Strategic Management Research (SMR) Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His teaching responsibilities include entrepreneurship, business plan development and field study program advisories. SMR is the field study program, required of all Executive MBA students.

He was Business Development Manager for the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property, which is responsible for patent protection and commercialization of UCLA research.

Previously, he was a venture partner with Palomar Ventures, a VC firm in Santa Monica, California. Before Palomar, he was a Business Development Manager at Cisco Systems. Prior to that he was with Infonet Services Corporation (NYSE:IN, now BT) where he designed Infonet’s IP data service.

From 1998 until 2006, he was a member of the board of directors of Switchcore AB, a publicly traded fabless semiconductor designer in Sweden. He has also held board of director positions with various startup companies and not-for-profit organizations.

He is the author of Residential Broadband, which presents an analysis of high-speed residential networking, published by Cisco Press.

Education

B.A. Mathematics, UCLA
M.S. Business, Quantitative Methods, UCLA

Course Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  • Explain the workings of a venture capital firm, including an example of how profits are divided among all the participants and a company’s founders.
  • Write an elevator pitch to use in seeking funding from venture capitalists.
  • Answer common questions an investor asks during the fundraising process.

Syllabus

Module Components:

Video Lectures:

  • Venture Capital as a source of Funds
  • The VC Fundraising Process
  • Improve Your Chances of Raising Money from VC

Readings:

  • Angles, VCs, or the Crowd: Who Should Fund Your Start-up?
  • Why 99.95% Of Entrepreneurs Should Stop Wasting Time Seeking
    Venture Capital
  • Steve Case: ‘The Team You Build Will Define the Company You Build’
  • Six Tips for Overcoming a ‘No’ When Seeking Funding

Case-Study:

  • Dazzle Boutique (Continued-Part 1) 

Quiz:

  • Raising Venture Capital

Support

Please email [email protected] for any support required with respect to the program, course or platform.