Month: July 2013

Talking Turkey With Chris Mayer

Turkey holds many fond memories for me. It was a country I first travelled to on a whim, after watching Midnight Express. The film is based on the true story of a young American student sentenced to spend 30 years in a Turkish prison for smuggling hashish out of Turkey.

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Make Millions AND Save Ed Snowden’s Life

In my recent post entitled When The Theatre Clears I discussed crypto-currencies. Specifically I said: “While the vast majority of citizens in most any country in the world today do not see a crypto-currency as a reliable or viable substitute for the scraps of paper they shuffle around daily, this

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The Case for Frontier Farmland

The following content is provided courtesy of our colleague Scott.  As Scott is passionate about the case for investment in frontier agriculture – a point in which we share much common ground – we asked him to share some of his insight. [hr] Last week I had lunch with an

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When the Theatre Clears

James Rickards, the author of the book Currency Wars tells a short story along the following lines: you’re sitting in a movie theatre and a couple of people get up and leave. Nobody takes much notice, now a half a dozen people all get up and leave at the same

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Funding Your Start-up

Further to my last post, I wanted to delve into the options available to entrepreneurs for funding their start-up. The topic may seem obvious – the founders have an idea and need capital – easy enough. OK, let’s hurry up already, get out there, raise some dosh and get this

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Lawyer
Venture Capital and Private Equity
Chris MacIntosh

The Ramifications of Convertible Debt

For many early stage companies two oft-used financing mechanisms are convertible debt and preferred equity. The former typically provides investors a discount to subsequent equity raising on the conversion – sometimes at a set price, other times at an adjustable price – and the latter is, well…preferred, and a topic

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A Can’t Lose Deal… “Public” Venture Capital

After the debacle that was Solyndra, we hoped that “public” venture capital would die a much deserved death. Alas, we once again underestimated the arrogance and self-professed intellectual superiority of the bureaucrats! Well we, cynics of “public” venture capital (aka government sponsored business), should hide in shame. We obviously didn’t

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