‘You Want to Get Rich, but That’s a Byproduct of Success’

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William Woodward


Managing Director

Anthem Venture Partners


Age:

47


Residence:

Malibu


Education:

B.S., business, University of Southern California


Previous Jobs:

Founded Paracomp, predecessor of multimedia software company Macromedia Inc. Founded Launch, now Yahoo Music. Chairman of Neben Vision, now owned by Google Inc.


Venture Capital Start:

Started at Westwood Management at 23 and later Woodriver Capital, based in New York. Then left to become an entrepreneur. Started first company, Paracomp, at 26. Company later merged with Macromind and Authorware and company went public in 1992 as Macromedia Inc. Later sold to Adobe for $3.4 billion. Then he returned to venture capital.


Target Market:

Early- to medium-stage tech companies, especially those that are Internet based


Financing:

Seed and series A or B. Average investment is $3 million to $4 million


Investment Philosophy:

“Entrepreneurialism isn’t just about the money. You want to grow something. Sure you want to get rich, but that’s a byproduct of the success of building a company, of doing something that people don’t expect you to do that the odds are against you on. That’s a big deal to me.”


Recent Fundings:

Demand Media Inc., a Los Angeles domain and user-driven publishing company started in his office that has raised $220 million. Vuvox, a Redwood City-based digital-media creation company.


Boards:

Solarflare Communications, Axiom Microdevices, Buzznet, Vuvox, Planet A.T.E., Wavestream


Gripe:

“When entrepreneurs are trying grow a business for wrong reasons, with no passion. They’re not prepared or they don’t appreciate what an investor needs. They don’t understand what you’re taking on when you’ve taken on an investor as a partner. Like it or not, you need to go win together, and they often think they’ll just take the money.”


Exit Strategies:

Mergers and acquisition and public offerings. “Those are the common ways. We try to grow the company organically or sell them. We recently sold two companies to Google and one to Intel.”


L.A. Market Outlook:

“There are really a lot of great opportunities here in application layer software, Internet and analog semiconductors. The market’s thin, meaning there are not that many people who are doers, which creates opportunities for people like us who are actually managing funds and actively investing.”


Biggest Challenge:

“Coaching my 9-year-old daughter’s soccer team. And raising money for Paracomp when I was only 26. I had to be really persuasive.”


Biggest Winner:

Myspace, sold to News Corp. for $740 million; Cognet, sold to Intel Corp. for more than $300 million.


Biggest Bust:

Nova Crystals Inc. “We lost 65 percent our money.”


Emily Bryson York

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