Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat: Tuff Yen, Seraph Group
Tuff Yen, Founder and Managing Partner of Seraph Group, joined this edition of Business Beat to discuss his venture capital investment firm and their work. In a discussion with Frazier & Deeter’s Roger Lusby and Matt Foster, Tuff talked about Seraph Group and its mission, his move to Milton from the Bay Area, how Seraph is investing locally, trends he’s seeing, what Seraph is looking for in investments, how investors can get involved, and much more.
Business Beat is presented by Alpharetta CPA firm Frazier & Deeter and is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®
Seraph Group
Unlike a traditional venture fund, Structured Angel Fund offers a 20+ portfolio of seed and pre-seed stage investment into high-risk/high return technology startups. Investors not only gain a diversified portfolio, but also have the opportunity to co-invest on a deal by deal basis above his managed portfolio. This two-prong approach provided investors with a managed fund by the General Partner and a self-directed investment portfolio by investors.
SAF is popular with C-level executives and entrepreneurs. For the busy individuals whose time is limited, the managed portfolio is not only a low-cost way of investing in startup, but a more efficient acquisition of diversification. For individuals who have strong domain knowledge and operating experience, SAF offers investors the opportunity to work with startups first-hand.
Seraph Group’s approach to angel investment addresses and solves many challenges experienced by localized angel organizations. Their national reach for deal flow, 400+ domain experts, professionally managed process and 19 years history of success established the company as the premier professional organization in the United States.
Seraph Research Foundation was founded to help the local community build a successful capital source for startups based on almost two decades of learnings from personally invested in 130+ companies. As technology continues to play a significant role in the economy, and many accelerators and incubators graduate companies, the growth of risk capital has not caught up with the demand.
Few communities or organizations have experience in organizing angel investment groups. Seraph Research Foundation will assist local communities in a public private partnership to help educate, train, organize and manage an angel investment group, a vital component of keeping promising companies local, translating into economic growth, job creation and tax revenues.
Seraph Research Foundation has established local angel investment groups in Austin Texas and Lubbock Texas.
Tuff Yen, Founder and Managing Partner, Seraph Group
Tuff Yen is the founder Seraph Research Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the education and training of angel investors and working with the local community to establish angel/seed investment organization to help the public and private effort on growing the economy. He is also the founder of Seraph Milton, a north Fulton Georgia based angel investment group.
Mr. Yen is also the founder of Seraph Group, an investment firm that brings together successful individuals to create wealth through ownership of private enterprises. Seraph Group was founded in 2004 and is now the largest, and only global angel investment fund group that specializes in backing high-tech startups.
Mr. Yen started his career in the biotechnology industry with a degree in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of California Berkeley. He worked at Genentech and Amgen, two leading biotechnology companies in northern and southern California. After graduating from the Yale School of Management in New Haven Connecticut, Mr. Yen began his venture capital career at Chemical Venture Partner, the private equity and venture capital arm of Chemical Bank, then managing $8 Billion in New York City. Chemical Bank later merged with Chase Manhattan Bank and then JPMorgan Bank, and the group became JPMorgan Partners which then managed close to $20 Billion. Mr. Yen subsequently joined a Hambrecht & Quist’s affiliated $1.6billion fund in San Francisco.
With an extensive venture capital background on both coasts, Mr. Yen saw an opportunity to deliver a new investment platform for accredited investors and launched Seraph Group in 2004. He introduced Structured Angel Fund™, a venture capital fund designed specifically for angel investors and family offices to gain access to a diversified portfolio of seed stage startups and with the right to co-invest on a deal-by-deal basis. This GP-managed and LP-curated fund attracted close to 400 investors from 120+ cities in north America, Europe and Asia, many of them Fortune 500 C-level executives, entrepreneurs, technologists, innovators, investment and operating professionals.
Mr. Yen led Seraph Group and invested north of $120 million into 130+ companies. He reviewed between 300 and 400 investment proposals each year and was responsible for all aspects of an investment, from sourcing, investigating, conducting due diligence, and structuring. Mr. Yen has gained experience in investing in a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, entertainment, publishing, information technology, Internet, enterprise software, cybersecurity, aerospace, medical and life sciences.
Frazier & Deeter
The Alpharetta office of Frazier & Deeter is home to a thriving CPA tax practice, a growing advisory practice and an Employee Benefit Plan Services group. CPAs and advisors in the Frazier & Deeter Alpharetta office serve clients across North Georgia and around the country with services such as personal tax planning, estate planning, business tax planning, business tax compliance, state and local tax planning, financial statement reviews, financial statement audits, employee benefit plan audits, internal audit outsourcing, cyber security, data privacy, SOX and other regulatory compliance, mergers, and acquisitions and more. Alpharetta CPAs serve clients ranging from business owners and executives to large corporations.
Roger Lusby, host of Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat, is an Alpharetta CPA and Alpharetta Office Managing Partner for Frazier & Deeter. He is also a member of the Tax Department in charge of coordinating tax and accounting services for our clientele. His responsibilities include a review of a variety of tax returns with an emphasis in the individual, estate, and corporate areas. Client assistance is also provided in the areas of financial planning, executive compensation and stock option planning, estate and succession planning, international planning (FBAR, SFOP), health care, real estate, manufacturing, technology, and service companies.
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