Cliché or not, he—or she—who has the money…usually gets to make the rules. Except…when things don’t go as planned. Venture Capital, Private Equity, Bank Loans, Credit Card Bootstrapping…as you acquire funding for your business, your obligations go up faster than your cash flow. If you don’t keep up your end of the bargain, you won’t be getting any sympathy, no matter what the excuse is.
Episode #8 (Investing and Cash Flow) is now on-the-air. The full 30-minute episode is here, featuring Don Nelson, Aaron Cai, Ben Littauer and Dan Weller. Click on their names below for the individual interview segments.
Donald Nelson is a co-founder and Managing Director of Harken Capital. Previously, Don founded NelCap Advisers in 2007, and spent nearly a decade with SV Life Sciences. He initially served as an investment professional and CFO, and was then promoted to Head of Fundraising and Fund Strategy. Don was responsible for raising SV Life Sciences Funds III and IV, which constitute nearly $1.0 billion of the $1.6 billion of private capital under management by SV Life Sciences.
Aaron Cai is a seasoned professional with experience in technology and investment research, global value chain development, and process improvement and control. He has worked in Utilities, Electrical/Electronics products, and Investment Management industries and his goal is to combine operations and investment management experiences and his specialties are in Capital Goods, Fundamental Analysis, Global Sourcing, Process Improvement, Program Management; Research, analyze, identify and manage Global, Technological Investment Opportunities, Financial Statement Analysis and Modeling.
Ben Littauer is an angel investor with expertise in Internet and communications technologies, as well as healthcare IT. Currently an active member of Boston Harbor Angels and Walnut Venture Associates with investments in a wide variety of startups, he sits on the boards of two portfolio companies. He is a mentor for Mass Challenge and The Capital Network, and is on the advisory board at TCN. Mr. Littauer is a judge for Mass Challenge, MITX Innovation Awards, and various academic competitions. Mr. Littauer was Technology Strategist for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he defined the architecture for PatientSite, allowing patients to communicate securely with their healthcare team and view their own medical records. He was a consultant to the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium on healthcare data security projects.
Dan Weller‘s family has been in carpeting for three generations. Mike Weller spent many years in Boston, working for Warren Allen, a carpet distributor in New England. Mike’s son, Bob Weller decided to carry on the carpeting tradition and in 1954; he started Robert Weller Corporation, a carpet conversion factory located on A Street in South Boston. Bob would purchase carpet remnants from the various carpet mills and convert these remnants into first quality area rugs. To this day, we are one of the last of our breed in the northeast, supplying much of New England with the highest quality area rugs.
In 1999 Bob’s son Dan joined the company and is now the acting president. The company has enjoyed steady growth in our wholesale division and astonishing growth from our retail division. In 2000, Weller Carpets was faced with a decision – with the continued restructuring of the South Boston Waterfront, Weller Carpets would be forced to relocate. After a long search, we first resettled in Avon, MA, and then finally here in Norwood, MA..
Greg Stoller is actively involved in building entrepreneurship and international business programs at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. He teaches courses in entrepreneurship, global strategy and management and runs the Asian International Management Experience Program, and the Asian International Consulting Project.
