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Tristan de Viaris on December 26, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)
We are inviting our clients and friends to join us for an informal breakfast gathering we are organizing on:
Thursday January 13th
at Boqueria
(Flatiron location, 53 West 19th street, see map).
You can stop by, at your best convenience, anytime between 8:30am and 11:00am.
All the Melcion partners will be there, so it would be an opportunity to meet them as well.
You can drop a quick email to one of us to confirm your venue.
Tristan de Viaris on January 11, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Many people have been asking how deals get done these days. With banks not coming to terms with the need to start doing their part to help the economy, i.e. lending their customers the money they need to grow, Apredica's double transaction last week gives an indication of the creative ways entrepreneurs have been using to build their businesses and protect their competitive edge.
When Apredica (Melcion, Chassagne & Company client) was approached to acquire the assets of Cellumen, Inc. a Pittsburgh-based company funded by Safeguard Scientifics and Novitas Capital, it needed to borrow the money it required to conclude the transaction. With banks looking the other way and traditional investors shying away from non-traditional deals, Apredica had to pull all the stops to conclude the acquisition in a narrow window.
Cyprotex, a UK-based AIM-listed Clinical Research Organization had been looking for ways to enter the US market. This triangular operation allows Apredica to acquire the toxicology technology developed by Cellumen and immediately put it to use on both sides of the Atlantic, directly through its own marketing prowess and through Cyprotex's European presence.
For Apredica's founders, this is not an exit, rather a stepping stone to conquer the world. The press that has picked up on the story on both sides of the Atlantic failed to recognize that the share issuance part of the deal gives Apredica co-founders Katya Tsaioun and Doug Bates a significant ownership position in Cyprotex's traded stock, making them, (combined), Cyprotex's largest minority shareholder. Their skills are also complementary to Cyprotex's management, creating a powerful quintet in the industry. Cyprotex gets its US beach-head, a solid team including the Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Marketing Officer they lacked and benefit from the Toxicology technology Apredica just acquired as they were readying their own Toxicology program.
The market seems to read similar things into the story as Cyprotex's share price lifted by 18% in the 2 days following the announcement.
Alberto Haddad on August 10, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
This is a copy of an original post located here>>
mdangear on December 05, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
mdangear on November 27, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Marc Dangeard, Melcion's partner in San Francisco, made it into the Top Twitter Social Entrepreneurs list by Nathaniel Whittemore
Here is Nathaniel's list:
Name - Erik Hersman
Twitter - @whiteafrican
Why You Should Follow - Founder of Ushahidi, blogger at AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican, all around smart guy and great tracker of the African technology and innovation
Name - Guy Kawasaki
Twitter - @guykawasaki
Why You Should Follow - Founder of Alltop, social media evangelist and best selling author on entrepreneurship, tweets regularly with practical advice for traditional and social entrepreneurs
Name - Vanessa Mason
Twitter - @vanessamason
Why You Should Follow - Blogger and tracker about all things global health, international development, and creative solutions to poverty and inequality
Name - Marc Dangeard
Twitter - @mdangear
Why You Should Follow - Founder of Entrepreneur Commons and general advisor to social entrepreneurs
Name - Joe Solomon
Twitter - @engagejoe
Why You Should Follow - Social media consultant working with Social Actions, Joe's Twitter stream is a hub for all online social innovation
Name - VCTips
Twitter - @vctips
Why You Should Follow - An aggregator of great tips for those entrepreneurs who are pitching or looking to pitch to venture firms and angel investors
Name - Jon Gosier / Appfrica
Twitter - @appfrica
Why You Should Follow - Jon's Appfrica project does a phenomenal job keeping track of social technology innovations with ramifications for the developing world
Name - Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org / Nathaniel Whittemore
Twitter - @socialentrprnr
Why You Should Follow - Our official Socialentrepreneurship.change.org Twitter account - get updated about new posts and interesting projects
mdangear on November 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
This week is Global Entrepreneur week, and I submitted a challenge:
Entrepreneurs are the ones who will change the world. The issues that we have to resolve in the world (poverty, diseases, environmental and financial crisis, wars, etc...) are too big that they can be resolved by government or philanthropy. Everybody needs to get on board if we want to make a difference.
To move towards a better world, we need to stop focusing on maximizing profit, to instead focus on generating profits while bringing benefits to the ecosystem one way or another. It does not have to be anything big, just a little something that will make a difference in the end.
One tool that can help us do this is the Vindex: The Vindex is a simple number, but it helps turn the vague concept of reputation into a number that you (and others) can see, that you can compare to others and watch evolve over time.
So the simple number becomes the first step towards thinking differently about business and impact. When you start paying attention to this simple number, you have become a social entrepreneur, and the sky is the limit.
Getting a Vindex is a first step towards doing the right thing.
I got mine: http://mdangear.venyo.org
I hope that if you reading this you will get yours too: https://www.venyo.org/signup/
And then spread the word...
mdangear on November 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Les Echos (French equivalent of Financial Times) just published an article on Entrepreneur Commons, an effort sponsored by Melcion through our San Francisco team member Marc Dangeard.
You can read it here (in French)
mdangear on October 22, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)
mdangear on September 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)
You think $20B is a lot of money. Think again.
$20B is the amount that VCs invest every year.
But where does the money come from?
The
reality is that VC funds get their money from Limited Partners, for
whom VC investment is considered "alternative investment". This means
that it represents a very small fraction of their own portfolio.
Something that they do not spend as much of their attention on.
And where does this lead us?
More
and more people (including partners in VC funds) agree that something
is broken with the VC model. But nobody is doing anything about it:
-
The Limited Partners are happy with the people they work with, they
have invested their money but even more important they have invested
their trust in them. So if anything can be done, they trust that these
partners will work on the issue to fix.
- And then the
VCs do their best, they apply their expertise, they keep feeding the
system with startups that they think will make a difference, and their
view of fixing anything is to do more of same except better. Maybe they
will widen the scope of their investment, or maybe get into other types
of investments so that they can follow the startups throughout their
lifecycle. But the one thing they will not do is question too far the
system that feeds them, specially when it works good enough that they
can make a good living out of it (who would do any different really?).
So in the end, the VC model, however broken people will agree it is, is here to stay for some time, and until somebody decides to deal with the crumbs.
What is interesting is that $20B
is also the amount that Angels invest every year of smaller size deal.
And again, where does the money come from?
Angel money is
the "mad money", the spare change angels invest in startups so that
they stay involve with innovation and entrepreneurship (the passion,
the energy) while not having to do the hard work. A very precious help
for entrepreneurs, but is it money well spent the way it is done today?
I have discussed this in a previous post, and entrepreneurs are not getting as much help as they could hope from there either.
This is the challenge for the Entrepreneur Commons (tm), trying to find the Limited Partner or the Foundation that will decide to deal with these $20B crumbs...
If you are or know one of these, please contact me.
mdangear on July 04, 2008 in VC | Permalink | Comments (0)
