Tom: My name is Tom Fast and I'm a venture banker
based out of the New York City area.
We typically help the CEOs and executives of early
stage companies raise money so if someone has a great
idea, has an early stage venture, but needs capital and
they might be somewhere where they don't have a lot of
connections, they might be an engineer who's not connected
to the business world and they need capital so we help kind
of connect them and build that bridge.
Typically a six month to a year long process where you
get your story together and you get all of your information
together then you go out and you pitch investors over
three months, you get feedback, they come in and do due
diligence for a few months, and then hopefully you work
out a deal at some point after that.
It's typically you're going out to anywhere from 30 to 50
different investors and you're telling the story,
you're kind of seeing what resonates and really refining
that story as you go along but hopefully at the end of it
you typically are around 20 to 50 millions dollars we
raise for companies.
I tend to focus on two or three different
projects at a time.
I think if you go and, in past lives when I've worked for
larger banks they will have people working five or six
but for me doing it well and getting referrals from other
board members is what's important so we will do two or
three at at time.
Depends on the life cycle, depends on the work so it's
either financial models and putting together decks and
making sure you have your list of companies you want to
go out to, or it's sitting on a WebEx managing presentations
with the companies, hearing them pitch their initial stories
to the investors.
Then the next stage obviously, a lot of it's at the client's
site where you are there in board meetings and kind of
meeting with potential investors and doing deeper diligence.
If you're looking for a nine to five it's probably not the
right role for you.
I think I'm at the point in my careers where it's a little
more structured but I have clients who call me on their
commute home from the West Coast and I'm on the East Coast
at 9:00 at night for them and it's midnight for me and when
they call you pick up the phone because it's just the nature
of a client service business, but it's people
that I love talking to.
I have one CEO that calls me everyday on his commute and
talks to me for an hour and always interesting challenges
he's facing, problems, and we do nothing but brainstorm
for an hour every single day.