Impact’21 | Eric Ball of Impact Ventures
Transcript of Eric Ball of Impact Ventures interview by Alan Olsen, Host of the American Dreams Show at Impact’21:
Alan Olsen: I’m here today with Eric Ball of Impact Venture Capital. Eric, welcome.
Eric Ball: Thanks, Alan, great to be here. And great to have you here as well.
Alan Olsen: So Eric, we’re in this phenomenal conference center up in Sacramento, the convention center at this. At the I guess we we took a year or two off with COVID. But tell us how Impact is doing today?
Eric Ball: Well, thanks. Yes, this is our annual event that hasn’t happened in two years. But it’s, it’s really, it’s really a great event, we have a chance to highlight the progress of several of the companies that we told people about two years ago, and introduce people to several other companies that are more recent investments for Impact Venture. We also talked a little bit this morning about our portfolio pre-COVID, and post-COVID. In particular, the fact that some of our companies struggled under COVID, some did better under COVID, with were remote work, lifestyle, and our portfolio valuation barely moved at all. So the rank ordering of our companies changed a little bit. But But overall, you know, we’re still at about on our fund one 3x valuation to cost ratio. And we now have eight companies, our initial companies and fund two, two of which we just added in the last week. And we’re, we’re really excited about the momentum that we have both in the maturing fund one, and in the relatively newer fund, two,
Alan Olsen: You know, a lot of people want to get involved with venture, but they often wait too long. And then when they see the return of the ventures, it’s, it’s too late. So right now, the second fund is open for new investors, you’re up to eight companies.
Eric Ball: We’re up to eight companies, we had nearly close of $16 million, that let us fund the initial eight companies. And we are accepting investors through at least the end of this quarter, and those new investors will get the same access to the same portfolio with the same progress that our existing investors have. So yes, there, there is still a chance for people to join us, we’re gonna do a larger fund close this this quarter. And, and we think that this is an amazing environment for venture. You know, if you look over the long run, early stage venture has higher returns than any other asset class, we think that a lot of people are struggling to figure out where to put, allocate their capital. Now, equity markets are arguably, if not overheated, highly heated, and volatile. Fixed Income has zero return. Real Estate has already gone up a lot. And we have a lot of data that suggests that the best time historically to invest in venture has always been about a year after a crisis. And that was true in 2001. That was true in 2008. And we believe that’s true now. And we believe that if those patterns repeat, this will be one of the best vintage years for venture your performance that people may have seen. So I say I can’t tell you what the optimum percentage of your capital to put into venture is. But it’s certainly not zero. And whenever you thought that percentage should be two years ago, I would argue it should be higher today.
Alan Olsen: So as as always, new investors should go do their own due diligence coming in, but how would they go ahead and contact you. For more information about Impact Venture two fund?
Eric Ball: Well, you can contact us, we have our emails on our website, impactvc.com. We’re happy to talk to people who may want to participate as investors. Also we’re thrilled to get referrals to entrepreneurs that we should look at. We’re currently vetting over 2000 entrepreneurs a year, over the last year or two, we we fund perhaps 10 of those 2000. So, you know, only only a few survive our due diligence process. But we’re thrilled to talk to people, whether they want to be investors in the fund, whether they want to bring us potential deals to invest in or whether they would like us to share with them some of the deals that they can invest in as co-investors as well.
Alan Olsen: Eric, thanks for being with us today.
Eric Ball: Thank you, Alan. Great to be here.
Alan Olsen: Thanks.
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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.
Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio
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Eric Ball is a technology finance professional, investor, and board member. He currently serves as General Partner for Impact Venture Capital, which has made several technology investments. He also chairs the Audit Committee at Glu Mobile, a publicly-traded leader in 3D freemium mobile gaming.
Until May 2016, Eric was Chief Financial Officer at C3 IoT, which is revolutionizing the use of big data to make our power network and the Internet of Things more efficient.
From 2005 to 2015, Eric served as Senior VP & Treasurer at Oracle, one of the world’s premier technology companies. While there he was named one of the 100 most influential people in finance by the editors of Treasury & Risk Magazine. Prior to joining Oracle, Eric served in various finance roles at Flextronics International, Cisco Systems, Avery Dennison, and AT&T.
Eric holds a PhD in management from the Drucker-Ito School, as well as masters degrees from the University of Rochester and a BA from University of Michigan. He is the co-author of the book ‘Unlocking the Ivory Tower’ (released in April 2016 in Japanese language version) and has taught at three universities as well as online.
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.