Media Covers CapLinked Deals with Startup America, Wahooly; Forbes Q&A

My company, CapLinked, has been in the news a fair amount in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Forbes published a Q&A with me about using CapLinked to manage a business transaction such as a capital raise:

Q: How does the system work? What are the benefits?

A: CapLinked is a collaborative platform for making business transactions simple and secure. While Fortune 500 companies have the option of using expensive virtual data room services such as Intralinks, startups and other middle-to-lower-market companies haven’t had an affordable platform designed to help them manage transactions. That’s where CapLinked comes in.

TechCrunch covered our recently announced partnership with Startup America:

CapLinked’s platform includes private workspaces where entrepreneurs and investors can share fundraising documents and manage other transactions, as well as a network tools for connecting the two groups can meet. Now startups who are enrolled in Startup America will now get access to the company’s premium features, says CEO Eric Jackson. Those tools include workspace activity reports, multiple workspace administrators, the ability to create additional workspaces, plus more tools for networking with investors.

PandoDaily reported that online accelerator Wahooly has chosen CapLinked to help them manage due diligence and investor reporting for their startups:

Wahooly is a service that gives actual startup equity to influential people in exchange for their social media marketing services. That might sound like a recipe for legal disaster, but today the company took a step toward bringing further legitimacy to it’s platform. The company has teamed up with financial services startup CapLinked to help the company perform due diligence, without the hassle of face-to-face meetings.

How to Raise Capital in 6 Easy Steps

Earlier this month I discussed key tactics for startups to raise seed funding at a meetup sponsored by LB Tech. Here are the slides from my presentation. They’re provide a simple checklist of issues a startup needs to address when putting together an early stage funding round.

Raising Capital? Avoid this Mistake! (And Other Useful Tips…)

VentureBeat recently published my editorial 6 Tips for Raising Capital in 2012. One of the most important tips I included was a warning not to break the ban on public solicitation of a private offering:

There’s a lot of euphoria out there now about the potential for crowd-funding to ease restrictions on obtaining startup capital. But nothing has yet been signed into law yet. For now, make sure you’re familiar with Regulation D, which governs who can invest in a private company. Reg D also puts strict limits on public advertising for private investment opportunities, so be sure that you’re not soliciting investments on a public medium such as Twitter or your blog.

Many entrepreneurs have no idea that Reg D exists — we sometimes hear from CapLinked users who ask how they can advertise their private deal room in tweets. (You can’t! It’s private for a reason.) Click here to read the other 5 tips that I shared.

Why the “PayPal Mafia” is Killing It

That’s the title of my Huffington Post editorial that ran today. In the wake of Yelp filing for an IPO a couple of weeks ago, I explore the issue of the amazing track record PayPal alumni have in starting companies:

Why are PayPal alumni so successful? Or, to consider the question a different way, what factors turned PayPal into an incubator for so much entrepreneurial talent? As PayPal’s first marketing director and now the founder of a startup called CapLinked, I’ve been privileged to see the entire process firsthand. The answer lies not just in PayPal’s hiring practices but also the unique circumstances and vision of the company’s founding.

I go on to identify four reasons why the experience of working at PayPal prepared the company’s alumni to become great entrepreneurs.

The editorial was based on a presentation I gave at Startup Weekend in Orange County a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the slide deck for those of you intimidated by a 900 word HuffPo essay. 😉