New Location

Sheraton Delfina Santa Monica
Link
530 W. Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, California 90405


Agenda
6:00-7:00 PM Networking
7:00-9:00 PM Dinner & Presentation

Cost
Members $35
Non-members $60

Parking
Validated Self-Parking $6
Validated Valet $9

Or Call (310) 325-4000

Four out of five businesses fail within their first five years. And one of the major causes is the lack of planning. A business plan is a critical document for success that should be updated annually.

Whether you're writing an internal business plan for operations or an external business plan for funding, you'll want to hear from the best of the best.

Three successful executives who have written great business plans will discuss their techniques with three business plan reviewers.

PANELIST:

• Jim Armstrong, Managing Director of Clearstone Venture Partners
• Jeff Cohn, Investment Screening Director for Business Plans,

  Tech Coast Angels
• Bob Foster, Adjunct Associate Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Management
• Eric David Greenspan, founder & Chairman, Make It Work, Inc.
• Craig Nelson, Founder & CTO, Vigilistics
• Nicholas Seet, Founder & CTO, Auditude
  

MODERATOR:

Barbara Lewis, Founder of MarQuant Analytics and Centurion Consulting Group

SPEAKER BIOS:

Jim Armstrong, Clearstone Venture Partners
A successful and experienced early stage venture investor across a variety of enterprise and consumer facing technology companies, Jim has established himself as a leading investor and company builder in Southern California. Since joining Clearstone early in its formation, Jim has applied his strong management skills, communication skills, market knowledge and industry contacts to help Clearstone companies deliver a strong record of venture performance. Jim's work at Clearstone is focused on information technology investments, with particular interest in application software, information management and security, and Internet-enabled businesses. In each of 2004, 2005 and 2006, Jim was recognized as one of the top 100 Venture Capitalists in the United States by Forbes Magazine in its annual Midas List.

Jim joined Clearstone Venture Partners in 1998 from Austin Ventures, a leading venture fund, where he spent three years investing in a variety of technology and technology-enabled service companies. Jim also worked with idealab, the incubator, helping to guide and fund a variety of early Internet companies. Jim currently represents Clearstone on the boards of ARIO Data Networks, Internet Brands (formerly CarsDirect), Integrien, Intersperse, iPolicy Networks, Siderean Software, SupplyFrame, Vast and is responsible for the firm's investments in Composite Software and Certus Software. Jim actively represented Clearstone's investment in former portfolio companies Comet Systems (acquired by FindWhat.com), PayPal (acquired by eBay as a public company), United Online (NASDAQ: UNTD), Jump Networks (acquired by Microsoft) and TriVida (acquired by BeFree).

Jim holds a BA in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and also holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jeff Cohn, Tech Coast Angels
Jeff Cohn is the Investment Screening Director for the Tech Coast Angels, which provide seed and early-stage capital in the range of $250K-$5MM. Since 1999
Jeff has managed the growth of the Tech Coast Angels membership from 70 to
300 investors and 32 venture capital affiliates and has helped source the private financing of more than 100 Southern California based technology companies. Jeff's technology carrier includes consulting for ebusiness development firm iXL (Former Nasdaq: IIXL), and the enterprise software company Computer Associates International, Inc. (Nasdaq: CA). Jeff is also the founder of two nationally recognized Internet websites DeadCellZones.com and PhotoEnforced.com. Jeff has a B.S. in Business Administration, Finance from the University of Colorado.

Bob Foster, UCLA Anderson School of Management
Bob Foster teaches High Technology Strategy, Business Plan Development and management consulting Field Study. He has taught Business Plan Development every year since 1999, part of the school's Price Center for Entrepreneurship. This entrepreneurship program at Anderson is recognized as one of the leading programs in the world, with the Financial Times naming it the "#1 program in the world". He is also the faculty advisor for the school's Venture Capital Investment Competition team.

Bob has taught Field Study every since 1983, advising over 100 management consulting field studies, most of them for high technology firms such as Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Nokia and Hewlett-Packard as well as many startup technology firms. His teams have won many awards for outstanding consulting studies.

During a 17-year period from 1983 to 1999, he was president/CEO of four different high technology firms. Products include software (enterprise resource management, financial applications, customer relationship management, digital mapping, GPS), factory automation, industrial machinery, map publishing and composite plastics.

Eric David Greenspan, Make It Work, Inc.
Winner of 2006 Software Industry Award for "Software Services Company of the Year"; Venture Net Finalist 2005.

Eric David Greenspan is a serial entrepreneur with 19 years of experience in the computer industry. Mr. Greenspan began his career at IBM, as an education marketing representative and was one of the youngest IBMers in history. He started his first company in 1995, also called "Make It Work." The company grew to become one of the largest Citrix partners in the world, awarded the distinguished status of "Platinum." In 1999, Mr. Greenspan successfully sold the company in 2000. He then created a new company called Push, Inc., which was named top CRM Application Service Provider (ASP) in the nation by PC/Magazine. As a result, Mr. Greenspan was appointed to the iBusiness Board of Governers by Citrix, helping guide the burgeoning new industry. Mr. Greenspan and his team successfully sold a significant portion of the company to KPMG LLP, secured a $5.5 million contract amongst others and raised $10 million in capital to build the area's leading ASP datacenter and solution provider.

In 2001, Mr. Greenspan, formed a new company called Make It Work LLC.
Now known as Make It Work, Inc., the company is "the Neighborhood Computer Support company" and has recently been named "Software Services Company of the Year" at the 2006 Software Industry Awards held in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Greenspan successfully raised $2.6 million in capital, some of which was provided through the latest round by Tech Coast Angels, the nations largest angel funding network. Make It Work sports a fleet of red and white Mini Coopers that span the entire Southern California territory providing onsite support and services to residential computer users and really small businesses. The company has just entered its 12th quarter of successful consecutive growth and is currently ahead of forecast on 3x growth over the prior year.

Nicholas Seet, Auditude
winner of Knapp Award in 2005 for the top business plan at UCLA Anderson; Venture Net Finalist 2005. Nicholas Seet is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of Auditude, a provider of real-time media and advertising verification information. His firm's business plan won the Knapp Competition at UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2005. He has worked for Deloitte Consulting's Orange County practice focusing on middleware. Subsequent to that in 1999, he founded SIVI, a Los Angeles Internet incubator and acquired TigerIT, a software development firm in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nicholas graduated Harvey Mudd College (Claremont, CA), with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, and received his MBA at UCLA Anderson majoring in entrepreneurship and finance.

Craig Nelson, Vigilistics
Venture Net Finalist 2005 and "Best of Show" Winner. Craig Nelson has launched several ventures, most recently Vigilistics, Inc., a software company where he is Founder and Chief Technical Officer. He is also a Director of Mission Controls Automation, Inc., which he founded with two partners in 1997. Mission Controls is an engineering firm, which placed #248 on the INC 500 list of fastest growing companies in 2002.

Craig has formed other profit and non-profit organizations in his career including a rescue team, which furnished services at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Craig has been published on radio, newspapers and magazines on how to build teamwork in organizations and make them last.

Barbara Lewis, MarQuant Analytics and Centurion Consulting Group
Prior to starting her software company, MarQuant Analytics in 2003, Barbara Lewis founded Centurion Consulting Group in 1995, which offered business plan development as one of its services. Barbara focused on the strategy and marketing side of plans, while her partner, Dan Otto whom she met while getting her MBA at UCLA Anderson, focused on the finance and operations. Barbara began her career as a journalist, writing for such publications as the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, among others.