Angel Investors Archives - Business RadioX ®

PHELAN & MYERS 2 FOR 20: Venture Capital and Business Start-ups with Mike Dowdle of Circadian Ventures

January 30, 2025 by Mike

Gwinnett Business Radio

PHELAN & MYERS 2 FOR 20: Venture Capital and Business Start-ups with Mike Dowdle of Circadian Ventures

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Host Scott Phelan is joined by Mike Dowdle of Circadian Ventures to explain how business start-ups are funded and the differences between venture capital, angel investors, and private equity.

No matter where you are in life – just starting out, in your peak earning years, nearing retirement, or contemplating your legacy – Phelan and Myers Wealth Management Group of Janney Montgomery Scott is here for you. When you work with them, it’s about going beyond investing. It’s about connecting your life and your finances.

They take a comprehensive and customized approach to your finances, by understanding your needs and goals and aligning your investment strategies to help meet those goals. Their depth of knowledge and experience, combined with their firm’s capabilities and resources, enables them to provide high quality service, while offering advice and executing financial solutions for every stage of life.

No needs are more important than your own. They pride themselves in making your needs and goals, their own. They don’t simply work for you. They work with you to understand who you are as an individual and as an investor.

Their mission is to help you to define your financial objectives, and then use that knowledge to develop — together — a plan that is tailored to fit your unique needs and preferences, and is in your best interest. They’re proud to offer comprehensive financial planning resources, providing you access to education, advice, planning, and consultation.

Scott Phelan, CFP®
Executive Vice President/Wealth Management, Financial Advisor

Scott Phelan has over 20 years of financial advising and planning experience. As Executive Vice President/Wealth Management, Financial Advisor, his focus is helping build wealth for high net worth individuals and corporate clients. His core competencies include estate, retirement, insurance and income tax planning strategies. Scott has a long and distinguished career in the financial services industry having held leadership positions at Edward Jones, The Hartford, and New England Financial. Most recently, he was a Senior Vice President, Wealth Management, Financial Advisor/Senior Portfolio Management Director at Morgan Stanley. Scott began his career at the New England Financial Group where he developed and implemented employee 401(k) programs.

Phone: 678.448.4841
sphelan@janney.com

Tuff Yen, Seraph Group

February 21, 2023 by John Ray

Business Beat

Tuff Yen, Seraph Group

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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.

Company website | LinkedIn | Twitter

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.

LinkedIn | Twitter

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.

You can find Frazier & Deeter on social media:

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An episode archive of Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat can be found here.

Tom Malengo with Brandjectory and The Litchfield Fund

January 24, 2023 by Karen

Phoenix Business Radio

Tom Malengo with Brandjectory and The Litchfield Fund

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Tom Malengo with Brandjectory and The Litchfield Fund

Brandjectory provides business education to get CPG brands investor-ready, a social media platform to be discovered by investors, and multiple meetings every month where founders can hear from CPG investors, connect & meet with them, and even get 1 on1 coaching on questions of their concern, from investors & industry experts.

We have founder-only discussions, with special guests who will join the discussion and offer advice and suggestions. The Knowledge Base is widely acclaimed by investors as one of the best sources for brands to learn how to build a solid CPG business and work with investors.

The Knowledge Base now has more than 250 articles! We are growing daily, adding brands & investors, and now have close to 240 brands on the platform, 115+ who are part of our Premium package. We have more than 85 engaged investors & another 500 investors in our network. Brandjectory now has facilitated more than 1,500 founder/investor connections & 250 founder/investor mentoring sessions.

The Litchfield Fund Advises, Consults & Invests with emerging consumer product brands in the Natural/Organic food, beverage, health & wellness segments.

Tom Malengo has more than 40 years experience in leadership & consulting roles in General Business, Operations, Technology, Finance, Retail Delivery & Consumer Product Groups. His broad experience includes C-Level Production Management, Client Experience, Risk Management, Continuous Process Improvement, Business Process Re-engineering, & 3rd Party Production/Vendor Management.

With an extensive strategic planning and program/project implementation background, Tom has led multiple large scale operations, technology & merger implementations. Tom’s M&A, change management, & technology innovation experience has given him the insight and capability to help teams realize value by successfully creating, implementing and embracing change & growth.

Tom holds a BS in Mathematics from John Carroll University and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School. Tom is currently co-founder of Brandjectory & co-founder & chief business officer of The Litchfield Fund.

Follow Brandjectory on LinkedIn and Twitter.