Amplifier Ventures Launches Business Accelerator Program to Help Entrepreneurs Start Businesses in Uncertain Times > Amplifier Ventures

Monday, February 02, 2009

Amplifier Ventures Launches Business Accelerator Program to Help Entrepreneurs Start Businesses in Uncertain Times
By jaberman @ 12:53 PM :: 2934 Views :: 5 Comments :: :: Amp News

Amplifier Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund, and Amplifier Network, a provider of education and collaborative online content for entrepreneurs, today announced the Amplifier Business Accelerator Program to stimulate new technology company formation in the DC Technology Corridor. The three-month program will combine seed capital from Amplifier Ventures with experienced, hands-on mentoring and education by recognized experts, as well as social collaboration capabilities to support establishing durable businesses in today’s challenging economic climate.

The Program builds upon Amplifier Ventures’ established profile as an entrepreneur-focused, early-stage technology investor and applies the educational focus of the Amplifier Network to deliver a highly-structured and highly-focused program to qualifying candidates.

The Amplifier Business Accelerator Program will provide to selected entrepreneurs -- in a short and focused period – high-impact knowledge, contacts and experience so that their businesses are more likely to succeed in the prevailing economic environment. Graduates will be poised for further growth and heightened appeal for capital investment, as needed. The Program, which provides participants with many of the advantages of venture capital involvement in a business, adds additional benefits not usually associated with a venture investment – intensive and active participation in business planning and execution, access to structured educational programs and free exchange of experiences and information among the participating entrepreneurs, mentors and other participants in the program.

The first Amplifier Business Acceleration Program will start March 1 with the selection of up to 6 entrepreneur-driven businesses. The formal portion of the Program will end June 1. Amplifier intends to pursue the Program thereafter on a bi-annual basis, with the next intake of participants scheduled for September 1, 2009. The Program does not focus on a specific technology (although technology related businesses are more likely to be selected). Businesses that have a clear path to permanence and growth will be preferred. Applicants wishing to apply to the Business Accelerator Program should visit Amplifier Network for more information.

The Program will be managed by a multi-disciplinary team, led by Jonathan Aberman, Managing Director of Amplifier Ventures and Amplifier Network, and a former venture capital lawyer and investment banker; Michael Dering, most recently CEO of Service Bench, a recognized expert in business management and expansion, and Rich Moore, currently on the Board of Directors of Vocus and a well known expert on marketing, sales and international transactions. The managers will provide day-to-day assistance to the participating entrepreneurs. The managers will be assisted by the members of the Board of Advisors of the Amplifier Network, a group which includes Todd Bramlett, CEO of Leverpoint, Loren Burnett, CEO of StackSafe, Eric Koefoot, formerly of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, Steve Balistreri, Partner Argy, Wiltse & Robinson and John Hurley, Senior Executive Venture Pipeline Group, DLA Piper.

Further assistance will be provided by members of the Amplifier Ventures investment team, which includes Bob Smith, founder of AOL Digital Cities , Ben Turner, currently CEO of iBelong Networks and Edgar Rios, founder of AmeriChoice.

“With the current chronic shortage of early stage venture capital, many promising business are not only losing access to capital, they are also losing out on opportunities to benefit from the business acceleration that a good venture investor brings to a company,” noted Jonathan Aberman. “We thought that by bringing our resources and those of the wider Amplifier Network to bear on a focused group of entrepreneurs, we could broaden the number of attractive early stage businesses in the DC region.”

Michael Dering, one of the managers of the Business Acceleration Program, added “I know from my own experience that the most useful thing for any entrepreneur is focused help and attention from experienced and committed people. We are hoping to make a difference to those that we work with, but also to the community as a whole. There are great things going on here in technology and we all need to support that.”

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release, contact Jonathan Aberman or visit http://www.amplifiernetworks.com .

Comments

By Anonymous @ Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:25 PM

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By Anonymous @ Saturday, February 07, 2009 5:32 PM

Jonathan: This looks like a great opportunity. Will you consider companies in Charlottesville, VA for the amplifier program? Best, Scott

Scott M. Strayer, MD, MPH
CEO and Founder
PocketMed, LLC
www.pocketmed.com

By Anonymous @ Thursday, February 05, 2009 7:46 PM

I am glad to hear of your progress, but I do not want the comments on the Network to become outlets for company or business promotion. Your guitar is interesting and I think that you will be successful. But, we have to all be careful about how we use this Network. What makes other open systems fail is where people use them for self promotion instead of community development. I don't want that to happen here.

So, I'm going to leave your comment up with this follow on comment so that we can all share the spirit of what the Amplifier Network is about. In the future I'll likely just delete any posting that is designed to promote a business idea or service to the wider community and is not seeking to make us all smarter or better entrepreneurs. Making us all smarter and better entrepreneurs is what the Amplifier Network is about.

The failure to moderate self promoting "questions" or "comments" is what kills many of other knoweldge networks out there, like the LinkedIn groups, for example. We can't do that and must all be desciplined in using the Amplifier Network for common good and not specific promotion. We want to make this community a general resource. If you want to share your viewpoints on a general issue that effects the start up community that's cool. But, its not cool to use it to sell.

Thanks, Jonathan

By Anonymous @ Saturday, February 07, 2009 7:37 PM

How long is the turn around, between submitting and receiving feedback?

Also - are decisions being made, based on the initial emailed submission, or will we be doing a follow up pitch?

Thanks,

Alan

By Anonymous @ Sunday, February 08, 2009 12:05 AM

Hi. You have raised some good questions about the program, which I will answer below:

1. Geography. The Amplifier Business Accelerator Program will be based in the DC Region where we are. Businesses within a reasonable driving distance will be considered, but the entreprenuer must be ready to spend significant time here over the next three months.

2. Timing. We are looking to select the participants by early March. We are doing that by asking for email applications which I and the other managers of the Amplifier Business Accelerator Program are reviewing. The volume has been much greater than we expected, so it is taking longer to get through the intial cut than we thought.

3. Feedback. When we finish the initial review we'll try to get back to each entrepreneur that applies with at least an email.

4. Meetings. We are just not going to be able to meet with everyone that has applied. We plan on meeting at least once with everyone that we ultimately select. We assume that they'd want to meet with us too!

Most importantly, thank you to all of you for your applications and interest. This effort has clearly hit the entrepreneurial community in DC at the right time. All of us are very pleased with the community's response.

Thanks,

Jonathan

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