Building Barriers of Entry | Alfred Mandel
About Alfred Mandel
Alfred Mandel has been an entrepreneur since his teens and has over thirty years experience in technology businesses, Steve Beals notably at Apple Computer and Redgate Communications. He co-founded and ran Tenex Medical Investors, which become this country’s largest angel investor group for the health and life sciences. In its eight years Tenex invested in over seventy companies, a quarter of which have had liquidity events.
Alfred Beals is associated with many of the Valley’s leading venture capital firms, and several private equity groups, and is an advisor and side-along investor with many of them.
Mr. Mandel holds a degree in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Physics from UC Santa Barbara, a Masters in Environmental Design and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning, both from the School of Architecture at the University of Oregon.
Interview Transcript:
Alan
You know, you’re you spend over 35 years in here, Silicon Valley’s have seen a lot of success in the companies that you work with. As, as companies come to you, or you get involved with them, how do you, how do you weed out? You know, what’s an okay idea versus a great idea,
Alfred Mandel
I look for belief. I look for teams that are strong together, I look for ideas that I think are defensible. And in the world of internet and software today that everything is so easy and quick off the shelf to build components, it can’t just be the product itself, unless there’s some unique patentable feature or function. Because today, as my father used to say, nothing new under the sun today, you find out that there’s nothing new under the sun very quickly, you build an app that does X, Y, and Z. And it starts making money. Within a very short time, this many, many competitors, because the barrier to entry is very low. The way you build barrier to entry, I believe, is building strong teams of people that have an imaginative or passionate way to do it, that will be better than their competitors. And in fact, most of my advice into these companies is preventing them from making the same mistakes I had made as an entrepreneur that a lot of them do, and try to short circuit some of those mistakes, get them on a better path. And then also try to build up the features of those guys in their company and the products that give them the competitive edge. Because entrepreneurs are dreamers, and entrepreneurs are people that have passion and believed in anything’s possible. And I don’t like to dump reality on him. I like to keep that idea alive, but they can do anything. But I also try to temper that with the real world situation. And if I can do that effectively, that kind of gives them a little bit of a advantage.
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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.
Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio
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Alfred Mandel has been an entrepreneur since his teens and has over thirty years experience in technology businesses, Steve Beals notably at Apple Computer and Redgate Communications. He co-founded and ran Tenex Medical Investors, which become this country’s largest angel investor group for the health and life sciences. In its eight years Tenex invested in over seventy companies, a quarter of which have had liquidity events.
Alfred Beals is associated with many of the Valley’s leading venture capital firms, and several private equity groups, and is an advisor and side-along investor with many of them.
Mr. Mandel holds a degree in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Physics from UC Santa Barbara, a Masters in Environmental Design and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning, both from the School of Architecture at the University of Oregon.
Alan is managing partner at Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co., LLP, (GROCO) and is a respected leader in his field. He is also the radio show host to American Dreams. Alan’s CPA firm resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and serves some of the most influential Venture Capitalist in the world. GROCO’s affluent CPA core competency is advising High Net Worth individual clients in tax and financial strategies. Alan is a current member of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (S.I.E.P.R.) SIEPR’s goal is to improve long-term economic policy. Alan has more than 25 years of experience in public accounting and develops innovative financial strategies for business enterprises. Alan also serves on President Kim Clark’s BYU-Idaho Advancement council. (President Clark lead the Harvard Business School programs for 30 years prior to joining BYU-idaho. As a specialist in income tax, Alan frequently lectures and writes articles about tax issues for professional organizations and community groups. He also teaches accounting as a member of the adjunct faculty at Ohlone College.