Overview

The value of venture capital industry has played a very important role to finance and mentor new start ups and innovation, commercialise the new technologies, and bring tremendous returns on investment to the stake holders. Venture capital backed companies in USA performed exceptionally better than those which were not backed by VCs.

The role of venture capitalist is not just handling equity checks instead of debt checks given by commercial banks. Over 90% of general partners of all venture funds in US had hands on domain experience. The real job of VCs start after making the investments in portfolio companies. They don’t just fund the companies but mentor and nurture the companies. Keeping the founders on track by reaching for key milestones, saying “NO” to distractions, and focusing them on commercial success is tremendously important for the success of enterprise.

This training seminar conducted by Dr. Akram Chowdry, a renown venture capitalist will focus and examine venture capital with emphasis upon the foundations of venture capital as a business, and the three phases of venture capital: Investment, Development and Exit. Also covered will be the contrast between private venture capital funds and corporate venture capital funds and change management as a constant consideration for each phase. The practical focus is to give each seminar participant a richer understanding and practical knowledge of the business of venture capital.

Objective of Training

After attending the training, you will be able to:

1. To gain insight and understanding the working of venture capitalist.
2. To understand the risk involved in sourcing funding for venture capital.
3. To acquire expertise to manage a venture capital company.

Who Should Attend

• CEO’s and Managing Directors • CFO’s and Finance Professionals • Sales and Marketing Managers • Business Development Managers • Investment Bankers and Financial Analysts • Academicians and MBA Students • Government and Research Agencies • Industrialist and Entrepreneurs.

Speaker's Background

The unique combination of academic qualification, teaching and business experience of Dr. Chowdry will enable him to share his experience as entrepreneur in USA. After getting his doctorate from UC Berkeley he was a professor of business at San Jose State University, California. After teaching for a few years, he decided to try his luck as an entrepreneur and started a computer manufacturing company (Prime Circuit Technology) by borrowing $25,000 against his house in 1983. At that time, he was the first and only Pakistani who was founder, CEO of such an enterprise in Silicon Valley,.

Later, he acquired Mylex Computer Corporation, a product company. He remained the CEO and Chairman of Mylex for almost 10 years. Mylex was publicly traded company (NASDAQ). In 1998 Mylex was acquired by IBM for over $500 million, with its revenues over $250,000,000.

Mylex was the first company in the world that introduced cache memory on a 386 motherboard. It was again the first company that introduced, SCSI controller with CPU and cache and state-of-the-art software suite for networking. In 1992, Mylex introduced RAID technology for storage area networks with complete hardware, firmware and software package. The technology was so advanced and timely that Mylex customers included IBM, HP, Intel, Siemens, DEC, Sony, NEC, AST, Acer and Samsung.

In 1991, US NEWS & World Report conducted a survey of thousands of small public companies in USA. Mylex was ranked # 1 in overall performance and stock appreciation.

For the last few years, Dr. Chowdry has been a General Partner of High-Tech Venture Capital Fund located in the Silicon Valley of California. He has tremendous experience of being on both sides of the funding equation. He is a charter member, and was member of the board of directors of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs www.tie.org) and has been involved in mentoring start-ups in Silicon Valley. As CEO of Mylex, Dr. Chowdry traveled all over the world,

In the past, he volunteered to teach entrepreneurship and venture capital at LUMS, Pakistan and TISBI in Kazan, Russia, KIMEP in Almaty, Malaysia Telekom and Kuwait Finance house in Bahrain. He made presentations at OIC conferences in Malaysia and Pakistan.

It is a great opportunity to learn from his vast experience and knowledge in this field. It is important to know that the major of Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital are fastest growing fields in USA and Europe.

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