Thursday, December 20, 2007

Jared Slosberg –Experienced Entrepreneur Starting Angel Investing


I had the opportunity of talking with a new CTAN member today, Jared Slosberg, the President of ProfitFuel which sells online advertising primarily to small businesses. They’ve been doing this for over five years. They started by selling advertising on Yahoo! and later expanded to sell advertisements outside of Yahoo. They built a site called Clicksmart, which focuses on driving ROI for their small business advertisers.

Jared previously helped run HomeCity an online real estate company in which customer acquisition is done over the web. The company targets people moving to town and then provides all standard real-estate services. They have 50 realtors and recently expanded to Dallas. It was originally designed to serve corporate relocations but now includes private relocations.

Jared is not new to angel investing. He invested in Autowraptec a company that makes a machine that automatically wraps silverware for restaurants. A big restaurant in a casino will have full time staff for wrapping napkins, but even small restaurants will typically make their waiters and waitresses come in before their shift to wrap. The company is currently ramping up manufacturing to serve larger customers.

Angels bring startup experience to the investment process. An angel investor puts 5 to 10 hours a week into angel investing – finding deals, screening deals, presenting them, performing due diligence and so on. We look forward to Jared’s contribution to angel investing in Austin.

Best regards,
Hall T.