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Women’s Association of Venture and Equity Sep. 30 Event: Deal Sourcing in a Down Market

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I hope that some of you can join us for a panel discussion sponsored by the Women’s Association of Venture & Equity, on Wednesday, September 30 in New York. I’ll be discussing the results of my research on best practices in deal origination. Please note this is only open to women.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/2LPu3F3v7kGaHr
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“Deal Sourcing in a Down Market”

A panel of experienced private equity investors and advisors will discuss strategies and best practices for finding deals in a tough market.

Event Chair:
Yue Guan, Palladium Equity Partners

Moderator:Djena Graves Lennix, ICV Partners

Panel:
Robert Landis, Partner, Origination – Riverside Company
David Teten, CEO – Teten Advisors, LLC
Robert Hall, Senior Advisor – Centerview Partners
Gretchen Perkins, VP of Business Development – Huron Capital Partners

Location:

New York Marriott East Side
525 Lexington Avenue (and 49th Street)
New York, NY 10017-1226

Click here for directions

Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Time: 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Agenda:

6:00 pm to 6:30 pm – Registration
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm – Panel Discussion
7:30 pm to 8:30 pm – Reception & Networking

Cost:

$80 for WAVE members;
$95 for non-members

How to register:
The audience is limited to women in PE – GPs, LPs, intermediaries, placement agents, and advisors. Advance registration is required. All registrations are screened.

Contact Danielle Fraser, WAVE Administrator at fraser@theacademygroup.com or call 877-928-3606.

London, Sep. 7: How Professional Investors Elicit Maximum Information in Minimum Time from Industry Sources

I’ll be speaking in London next week and hope that you will join us:

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: How Professional Investors Elicit Maximum Information in Minimum Time from Industry Sources

Sponsored by the Harvard Business School Club of London Thursday, September 7, 6:30pm Offices of McKinsey & Co., 1 Jermyn Street near Piccadilly Circus, London RSVP and prepayment: http://www.hbsa.org.uk/cgi/hbs?do=index&page=event&event=222

Cost: 10.00 pounds

“Interviewing industry sources requires a broad range of skills which I didn’t learn in business school: rapport-building; how to open a conversation to start off on the right foot; how to close a conversation and keep the door still open. Nitron Advisors has helped me to interact with experts more effectively, learn more from them, and make better trading decisions. Nitron showed me how to ask the right questions… And how to help an expert teach me how to ask the right questions! Any investor without this skill set is at a significant disadvantage in the war for alpha.” – Partner, Multistrategy/Convertible/Credit Arb $500M fund, New York, NY

As a professional investor, you speak every day with corporate management, with industry sources, and with other knowledgeable experts. However, are you getting as much information as possible? Do your sources pro-actively contact you with new investment ideas? Do you have access to the right sources for your business?

David Teten, CEO of research firm Nitron Advisors, will fill the gap. Come learn:

+ How can I learn the most information possible from industry sources?
+ What questions should I ask?
+ What are the killer phrases NOT to say?
+ How do I build a pool of knowledgeable sources in the industries in which I invest?
+ What questions prompt sources to share their most valuable information?
+ What are the legal and ethical guidelines that I should think about when speaking with sources?

There are countless books on how to read a balance sheet or an income statement. However, when you actually measure how professional investors spend their time, they spend perhaps half of it talking with management, attending conferences, and in other ways learning from industry sources. Yet, there’s not a single book on Amazon or course in business schools on how to do that effectively. We fill this gap.

Who is Nitron Advisors?

Nitron Advisors provides professional investors with precise answers to their questions about specific companies and industries, by tapping our exclusive Circle of Experts of thousands of knowledgeable industry insiders. You can learn directly from the Experts through private telephone consultations, in-person customized surveys, and interactive events. We provide access to senior executives, local managers, technologists, suppliers, customers, and regulatory observers. We specialize in connecting you with executives in transition.

By the nature of our business, we have developed an in-house expertise in elicitation, and developed this training program for our clients as a “User’s Guide” to our services.

“By talking with a Nitron Advisors expert, our…conversation led to north of a million dollar profit for us and our clients. Within 48 to 72 hours, I was trading facts with the actual person we wanted to be connected to, and that allowed us to form an extremely fast, investable idea.” – Lyron Bentovim, Managing Director, SKIRITAI Capital, New York Post, August 7, 2005

Biography of Speaker

David Teten is CEO of Nitron Advisors.

David is also the lead author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first business book about how to use online networks to accelerate sales and raise capital.

He runs TheVirtualHandshake.com resource site and blog and co-writes a monthly column for FastCompany.com. David recently was named a “2005 Future HR Leader” by Human Capital magazine for Nitron Advisors’ unique use of social software for recruiting.

David serves on the Advisory Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and of Accolo, a recruitment process outsourcer.

David is a frequent keynote speaker at finance and technology industry conferences and at such universities as Wharton, Columbia Business School, Yale, and Princeton.

He formerly was CEO of GoldNames, an investment bank focusing on serving the internet domain name asset class.

He has worked with Bear Stearns’ Investment Banking division as a member of their technology/defense mergers and acquisitions team, and was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co. David holds a Harvard MBA and a Yale BA.

Invitation: TiECON East, June 15-17, Boston, MA

I hope that some of our readers will join me at TiECON East, June 15-17, in Boston, MA. With over 1,200 expected attendees, TiECON East plans to become the largest Global Innovation conference on the East Coast.

The sponsoring organization is TiE, whose members receive roughly 5% of the venture capital investment in the United States.

Speakers include: –

Howard Anderson, Founder Battery Ventures and The Yankee Group – Nikesh Arora, VP & GM Europe, Google – Clayton M. Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School, Author, The Innovator’s Dilemma – Rajat Gupta, Senior Partner Worldwide, McKinsey & Co. – Ray Kurzweil, Author & Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence – Venkat Ramaswamy, Ross School of Business at University of Michigan – Paul Sagan, CEO, Akamai – Mohanbir Sawhney, Professor, Kellogg School of Management – Howard H. Stevenson, Professor, Harvard Business School – Hatim Tyabji, Executive Chairman, Bytemobile Inc.

I’ll be participating in two panels, one on innovation in social software and online networks, and one on innovation in investment research.

The keynote speaker is Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations (although I somehow doubt he will be talking about innovation, given that’s not the UN’s strength.) With prices starting at $269 for TiE Members and $100 for student members, the conference isn’t expensive. For more information or to register, contact the TiE-Boston office at (781) 272-3875 or visit www.tieconeast.com .

How to Maximize the Value of your Time in Business School

I gave a talk to NYU’s Stern Scholars on Dec. 9 on “How to Maximize the Value of Your Time in Business School“. (Thank you to Ken Wee for coordinating the event!) Among the topics I covered: career planning, time optimization, and selective short-term learning programs and scholarships. I based this speech on interviews I conducted of recent graduates from leading business schools, asking them, “What would you have done differently? What is your advice for someone just starting your program”.