Self-described geek and tech revolution pioneer, Mike Edelhart, has enjoyed a rich career taking him from prestigious positions including Executive Editor of PC Magazine and later Executive President at Ziff. Edelhart is now at the helm with Founder and partner, Bill Lohse, as the Managing Partner of Social Starts, a largely successful venture capital company with a data-driven approach to moment-of-inception investing.
Edelhart and Lohse knew this generation of tech was going to be bigger than the first two revolutions – PC and the internet, that they had been actively a part of. So what do you do when you have two of the sharpest minds in the industry with loads of experience? You create a VC organization to benefit the masses.
Social Starts is a unique VC with the goal to be the first professional investor an entrepreneur allows into their project. In order to do that they want to literally be on the ground wherever they believe solid startups are likely to pop up; meaning both physical location as well as in specific industries such as medical, technology, etc.
As one of the most active first stage investors, Social Start generally starts with a list of approximately 4000 attractive startups at the beginning of any given year. Over the next few months, they may meet with half of those on the initial list and eventually boil it down to investing in approximately one new company per week; at least this has been the trend for the past five years. Social Start gives credit for this success to their unique scientific approach to early-stage investing driven by data and research. The idea is to track and make educated assessments of what, who, where and when these startups are going to boom.
For more information visit www.socialstarts.com