Seraph Group is an early stage venture capital firm comprised of successful business leaders and entrepreneurs who bring deep domain expertise and proven operating experience to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses. We are deeply committed to bring not only ‘smart money’ to the table, but also a network of relevant contacts and relationships that produce results for entrepreneurs. Our unique investment process is entrepreneur friendly, expedient, responsive and professional.

Through our global network, entrepreneurs can be anywhere and leverage the resources of Seraph Group. If you have the vision, the drive and the right product and services to make a difference, we encourage you to reach out to us. By leveraging the deep operating experience of Seraph members, entrepreneurs can increase their likelihood for success.

We encourage you to learn more about how we work, our team, and our portfolio companies by exploring this section of our site.

Atlanta VCs specializing in seed/angel round investments.

Literally 2 blocks from me.

Seraph Group

UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund
The Strategic Enterprise Fund (the "SEF") is the private equity strategic investment arm of UPS. The Fund is a corporate venture capital group which focuses on developing critical partnerships and acquiring knowledge returns from its investments in information technology companies and emerging market-spaces.

Established in 1997, the SEF is an important business development tool that enables exploration of emerging markets and technologies that may enhance the evolving business model of UPS. The Fund monitors external business environments and allows UPS to learn from companies directly involved in the new economy. Knowledge gained from fund investments helps UPS to "Enable Global Commerce" by providing our customers with tools to enhance every aspect of business. These tools broaden and speed the flow of not only goods, but information and funds as well.

The Fund invests in companies that are strategically relevant to UPS, and reflects the strong emphasis that UPS places on becoming the leading provider of technologically advanced services in the transportation and logistics industry.

Whoah, UPS is a VC.

UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund

Founded in 1983, Atlanta-based Noro-Moseley Partners ("NMP") is one of the largest and most experienced venture capital firms in the southeastern United States. Since its inception, NMP has created five limited partnership funds totaling approximately $580 million in capital and has invested in approximately 160 companies.

In 2000, NMP announced the closing of NMP V, a $320 million venture capital fund, the largest ever in the Southeast. Our mission over the last twenty-three years remains the same: to partner with strong management teams to build companies of significant value.

NMP invests primarily in Southeastern-based, early and established growth stage companies. This includes companies in various stages of maturity from first round financings to established companies looking for growth capital for acquisitions, recaps or shareholder liquidity. Our industries of interest include technology, healthcare and business services. Please see the Investment Strategy section for a detailed description of our investment criteria.

We are actively searching for great entrepreneurs with growth plans to create significant value. NMP will partner with you to realize your long term vision and provide the appropriate financial resources, experience and foresight to help take your company to the next level.

Noro-Moseley Partners

How to hire the best people you've ever worked with

There are many aspects to hiring great people, and various people smarter than me have written extensively on the topic.

So I'm not going to try to be comprehensive.

But I am going to relay some lessons learned through hard experience on how to hire the best people you've ever worked with -- particularly for a startup.

I'm going to cover two key areas in this post:

Criteria: what to value when evaluating candidates.

And process: how to actually run the hiring process, and if necessary the aftermath of making a mistake.

Criteria first.

blog.pmarca.com: How to hire the best people you've ever worked with

About now you are probably saying, “Okay, you’ve written some helpful posts (at least we hope you think they have been helpful) on compensation, but show me the money! What are some real life compensation numbers?”

We hate compensation surveys. We hate average compensations ranges. We hate industry data. But – we know you want it (since 42 of you have asked us for it.) Just be careful how you use it. These are our opinions and experience backed up by some industry data that we track. Every case is different. Your mileage will vary. Tax, title, licence, and delivery charge not included.

Much of the cash comp will depend on how large the company is and where it is along the revenue and profitability curve. Geography matters and while these numbers are for the U.S, there will also be major differences within different parts of the country. Also, note that each round of financing will dilute ownership. We’ve done our best here to spread these numbers out from early stage and more mature startups. One thing that seems fairly consistent: companies with less rounds of funding have lower paid executives and founders make less cash, but have more equity than non-founders. Think of the non-founders as “hired guns” who are professional company managers, whereas the founders may not be, but given the risk of founding the company, generally hold higher equity stakes.

Ask The VC - What are typical compensation numbers?

we build websites that make you smile. get to know us.

electric pulp, an interactive agency. we build websites.

Entrepreneurial Leadership Roundtable

ATDC recently entered into a partnership with TAG to deliver some great programming open to any technology entrepreneur.

The next in this series is Thursday June 7 from 7:30 to 10:15 am at the ATDC. For you not so early risers the programming really starts at 8:00 am. The format for these is that there is a speaker on a subject that goes from 8:00 to 9:00 am. Then from 9:15 to 10:15 is an technology entrepreneur only roundtable session.

The upcoming roundtable is focus on entrepreneurial leadership. The discussion will include the below and others related to the topic:

• What is the role of the entrepreneurial CEO?
• How does this change as the CEO brings on an executive team?
• How does the CEO role change as you proceed from founding through various phases of growth?
• How open should an entrepreneurial CEO be about challenging issues such as running out of money?
• How does an entrepreneurial CEO manage his or her time given the overwhelming demands?
• What if a founder has limited experience growing a venture?
• How does one know if it is prudent to give up the CEO role?

We are essentially extending some of the conversations that happen within the incubator to a larger group. Any technology entrepreneur that is interested in this topic and/or learning more about ATDC is welcome to register.

Entrepreneurial Leadership Roundtable : June 7

What a difference a month makes - there's a lot of stuff bubbling underneath the surface here in Atlanta (and I take absolutely no credit.)

* I heard about a seed fund (sorry, can't give any more details) that's being raised similar to the Y Combinator model: give aspiring entrepreneurs $25-50K and, more importantly, the knowledge and connections to support starting and growing a company. This is fantastic news and I'm really excited about this. That first nut is the hardest money to raise and I think we'll see some interesting and successful companies that started out of this porgram.
* In case you haven't heard, Jeff and I are putting together HackAtlanta. I'm really looking forward to this; if you're into software or web programming and you live in North Georgia, there's no reason you shouldn't be there. Connect with your fellow gearheads and create some cool shit. Seriously, sign up today. We also need another person to help us organize the conference; right now, we tentatively have a place and a date. If you're interested, drop me an email at josh.watts@blue-violin.com.
* David Ratajczak has started a YnR Entrepreneur Social Hour. I attended the last one last Tuesday (3/13) and met some interesting people. This isn't just for tech start-ups. I met Roger Andresen who started toy company called A Broader View, Joel Nunez who started a service for recovering lost cell phones and other items of value called ImHONEST, and John Paul Souza (if you ever cross paths with John, take the time to talk to him - he's a ball of energy and could sell a ketchup popsicle to a girl in a white dress) who started a business process outsourcing business called DedicatedRep.com.
* Scott Burkett and Michael Blake recently started a podcast targeted towards entrepreneurs over at Startup Lounge. They originally thought they'd only do one podcast a month and are now doing 2-3 podcasts a month. Do you have some experience or knowledge you'd like to share and be a guest on Startup Lounge? You'll have to wait because they have guests booked through the end of the year.
* The group over at Big Thinkr are helping by organizing the YnR Entrepreneur Social Hour (mentioned above) and tech dinners and posting a list of events around Atlanta. The people I've met from Big Thinkr are all very nice guys and approachable; even if you're not starting a business, they're good people to meet and get to know.

Startup scene in Atlanta.

Blue Bootstrap: HackAtlanta

My collection of southeast/Atlanta entrepreneur/startup/VC blogs.

Bloglines | rjurney's Blogs | Atlanta Startups

I said, “Fred deserves a shot. Let’s invest.”

Yellow Flag 6: When you feel your heart taking over by shutting off the blood to your brain, call a time out, shut up, and make no investment decisions for 24 hours.

Well we did invest. The plan we signed off on showed minimal revenue for the first five months. Although Fred would continue to make calls on the current prospect base the investors gave him, he was also to hire the key people, find office space, build the product and build the marketing materials. He did everything he said he would. As we looked to the sixth month we realized the sales were not coming through.

Red Flag: No traction…no company.

That’s the story. I now look back and see all the yellow flags I just blew right by. I kick myself because I know better than to get ahead of my experience-based investment criteria. I made rookie mistakes and I didn’t do any favors for the entrepreneur, my fellow investors or myself. Good intentions, enthusiasm, and money are not the formula for a successful startup.

Paparelli Community Cafe: Six Yellow Flags...An Angel Investment Story