Impact’19: Michael Beaudoin II

Michael invests in early stage companies, on behalf of Mark IV Capital. Previously, Michael created and operated AT&T’s Aspire Accelerator; and served as a Vice President at JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. Michael graduated with an MBA from Pepperdine and undergraduate from Ball State University.

Bio Source: sched.com

Alan
Welcome, I visited a Michael Beaudoin of Mark 4 Capital. He’s the director of private equity. And welcome to the show. Thank you. So Michael, in, you know, for the listeners here, can you give your background of what you did prior to coming into mark four?

Michael
Yeah. So before Mark four, I was in a general management program at a TNC. And we’re managed different groups throughout the company. And as part of that helped develop what was became 18, t’s accelerators, we started investing in early stage education technology companies.

Alan
Okay. And then mark for what did you transition over? What was your your primary incentive to join up here?

Michael
That’s good question. So, as I mentioned, as part of a general management rotation program, that rotation was going to end. And I was having such a great time investing and working with energetic entrepreneurs, that I wanted to continue to make that my career. So I left 18 T to continue staying in this become a subject matter expert in investing in early stage companies.

Alan
Tell me about mark four, do they have an expertise? How large is the fund? Are they many funds? Or?

Michael
Yeah, we don’t disclose the size of the fund. It’s a boutique asset management firm that manages real estate assets, and then venture capital and private equity.

Alan
Okay. And what’s the typical deal size? If you’re funding it?

Michael
Yeah, we’re typically writing checks between 500,000 and $2 million and early stage technology companies. And the way we look at our companies that have a technology that’s going to measurably increased productivity at a fortune 500, or government customer. So Michael,

Alan
is you is you look at the world today, there’s ever changing technologies. Is there a particular technology that you want to gravitate towards moving into the investment arena,

Michael
you know, AI, I know it’s becoming a large button was buzzword everywhere. But if we really think about the way it is going to increase productivity, and make workers build a reduce the amount of mundane tasks they’re doing, that’s, of course, a big focus area, continuing on the software, and SAS, so we’re able to help companies access this technologies without having to spend a lot of CapEx. But what makes our group a little bit unique, we’ll still look at hard work to understand that all these new machines are going to need new hardware, new technologies, new silicon chips. And we’ll also look at material science. So we think there’s a large underinvestment today in material science. So we find some great technologies that are going to get to help companies or government make their processes more efficient.

Alan
When you’re when you’re evaluating a company, at what stage, do you want them to come to you? Do you want a seed stage company? Do you want series? A? Do you want something even late stage?

Michael
It’s a great question. So that keeps our what’s unique about our group is that we are able to ebb and flow across the stages. So right now we’re really focused on Series A, so companies that have had somewhere between one and a half to two and a half million dollars in annual revenues last year. But what’s interesting is if we found a company that has great IP, and it’s coming right out of university or other area that’s helped develop that IP and go ahead and file the patents for it, we have the ability to flex down to a seed stage if we need to, or participating in rounds is laid as a Series C. So the key for me is really what’s the growth trajectory of the company. But I would say 80 to 90% of our transactions are going to be in that series a range.

Alan
How important is it for the entrepreneur that you invest with to be seasoned entrepreneur?

Michael
You know, that’s good. Question two, we’d say, again, kind of going in the normal range is probably going to have an entrepreneur who’s run a division at a large company, has had a previous company they built and ran and been able to talk about their track record of success there. But we will step outside the norm and invest in maybe the grad student that it’s helped incubated technology in a lab at a university. We will take bets occasionally on first time entrepreneurs, but it’s more the exception than the norm.

Alan
If a person that wants to contact you for having you look at a deal. How would they go about that?

Michael
One of the best ways is to you know, what entrepreneurs be resourceful. So by looking in the network and seeing where they can have some common introduction, but they’re always able to send me an email at MBA you doin at Mark iv.com. So if they can figure out my email address, there’s a good chance they’re resourceful as well.

Alan
Michael, thanks for being with us today. Thank you. I’ve been visiting here today with Michael Beaudoin and he’s the director of private equity at Mark 4 Capital. Thank you.

 

 

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

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