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Venture Capital 101 with Castor Ventures

Watch this on-demand Venture Capital 101 presentation covering key documents, stages, and the basic principles of venture capital investing. The presentation was led by Castor Ventures’ Managing Partners, Chris Sklarin and Cainon Coates. It is open to all alumni and friends of MIT.

See video policy below.

During the session, we discussed:

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    The stages of venture capital
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    Key aspects of investing (theme-building, sourcing, and winning deals, etc.)
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    Important documents involved in investing
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    Examples of what to look for when evaluating deals

Note: You must be accredited to invest in venture capital. Important disclosure information can be found at av-funds.com/disclosures. 

About your presenters

Chris Sklarin
Chris Sklarin

Managing Partner, Castor Ventures

Chris has 30+ years of experience in venture capital, product development, and sales engineering. As an investor, he has deployed over $100 million into companies across all stages, from seed to growth/venture. At AV, Chris has built Castor Ventures from Fund 2 – 7 to over 150 portfolio companies. Prior to Castor, Chris was a Vice President at Edison Partners, where he focused on Enterprise 2.0 and mobile investments. Previously, Chris served as Director of Business Development at a biomedical venture accelerator and at an early-stage venture firm. Earlier in his investing career, as part of JumpStart, a nationally recognized venture development organization, Chris sourced and executed seed-stage investments. Chris received his SB in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1988 and his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Cainon Coates
Cainon Coates

Managing Partner, Castor Ventures

For the past 15 years, Cainon has worked with startups as an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor. Previously, he helped co-found several companies, including: Viafy (acquired by Constellation Software [TSX:CSU]), Human Design Medical (merged with Breas Medical of General Electric [NYSE:GE]), Triangle Research Labs (acquired by Lonza [SIX:LONN]), Revive Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Concordia Healthcare [TOR:CRX]), and University Laundry (acquired by a national operator, then Procter & Gamble’s Tide [NYSE: PG]). Cainon also worked at PBM Capital (a $500M healthcare-focused VC firm), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Goldman Sachs, and NASA. He has an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a BS from the University of Virginia in Systems and Information Engineering.

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