This last week ESTEEM students had the opportunity to meet and work with ND alum Jim Hunt, an active angel investor, board member of the Advisory Council for the ND College of Engineering, and adjunct professor of the MacDonough School at Georgetown. Mr. Hunt's career began in the 1970's as a government scientist, after which he founded his own company, BDS, Inc., in 1981. Following the merger of BDS in 1991-1992, Mr. Hunt spent time working with Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young. Mr. Hunt's angel investing practice began in the 1990's and has since resulted in twenty one exits. His investments focus primarily on technology, social media, analytics, and data management.
This will be the first of three workshops with Mr. Hunt and will explore the goals of angel investors, their strategies, and their selection processes. The workshops are running in conjunction with a course that Mr. Hunt is teaching in the MBA program at ND, which he plans will explore "various aspects of source identification, arriving at no more than two companies to consider investing in, determine whether a suitable investment can be made, arriving at the valuation for the investment, constructing the term sheet, assisting the company(s) with investment preparation and, finally, offering to lead the investment (with a nominal sum from the instructor) on one of the most popular and effective crowd funding platforms (from the course description)."
Having attended the workshop myself, I found the opportunity to learn from someone actively participating in the angel investing industry an invaluable asset. His perspectives on why he invested in one company versus another, how he made his decisions, and what his role in the new company might be cast some light on the world of angel investing and showed it from a different perspective. His experience was very apparent in all that he did, and I am looking forward to the next two meetings planned for this month.