Facebook’s recent IPO is one of the most celebrated in history. Despite the travails of its stock price since then, its early investors are now thought of as visionaries, and received handsome returns at the IPO. The company’s first angel investor, Peter Thiel, who invested $500,000 in 2004, sold a third of his stake for $640 million. Mark Pincus cashed out $38 million after a $40,000 investment. Yuri Milner invested in Facebook only three years ago, when it was worth $15 billion, and has more than tripled his investment. Facebook’s first venture capital investor, Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million seven years ago, cashed out $1.9 billion and now holds a stake worth several billion more.
As angel and venture investors seek the next Facebook amid a proliferation of innovative startups, increasing valuations, and a stampede of investors to seed and early stage opportunities, I am delighted to invite you to an important new industry conference on the future of financing at a highly discounted rate for active, professional angel investors.
I have the honor of chairing Venture Forward, and I will be joined by my venture capital colleagues Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital), Eric Hippeau (Lerer Ventures), David Hornik (August Capital and The Lobby Conference), Habib Kairouz (Rho Ventures), Gil Beyda (Genacast) and Howard Morgan (First Round Capital); super-angel investors including Esther Dyson (founding Chair of ICANN), Dave Berkus (author ofBerkonomics, with an IRR of 97% across 80 angel investments) and Stephanie Newby (Founder and CEO of Golden Seeds); as well as a Who’s Who of industry thought leaders including super-entrepreneur Scott Kurnit; TechStar’s David Tisch, Innovation America’s Richard Bendis; Bob Rice of Tangent Capital; and Joe Bartlettand Lori Smith of the Legislative Policy Committee of the Angel Capital Association.
Deirdre Bolton, anchor of Money Moves on Bloomberg Television, will serve as the conference host, with the discussions being moderated by the country’s leading financial journalists, including Bruce Upbin fromForbes, Henry Blodget of Business Insider, Jonathan Marino of PEhub.com, and JJ Ramberg from MSNBC-TV.
VentureForward 2012 is the forum for angel investors, early stage VCs, non-traditional investors and policy makers to share experiences and strategy, setting the agenda for the future of private investing. The conference will deal with topics including: how deals are sourced, circled and closed; who is funding which deals, and where; post funding risk and liquidity; and, of course, the extraordinary opportunities ahead resulting from the fundamental changes to the legal and regulatory environment.
There will be ample networking opportunities built into the program, in addition to a highly interactive conference agenda, so that speakers and attendees will have the opportunity to meet, engage and contribute to the conversation. Bloomberg TV will be broadcasting live from the conference, and will be conducting interviews with speakers and selected participants.
VentureForward 2012, on June 20th at The New York Academy of Sciences, promises to be the premier thought leadership event for the early stage equity industry. Because audience participation will be a key component of VentureForward, attendees are being carefully curated to ensure a vibrant and enlightening discussion, and I wanted to personally invite you to join in the proceedings.
To register, and for more information, please visit the conference’s website, VentureForwardConference.com. There you can view the agenda, conference themes and list of speakers. And remember to use your discount code, GVI4 when registering, at VentureForwardConference.com/register.
I hope to see you there!
All the best,
David S. Rose
