Almost live from IE: Talk with Tech Entrepreneur Jorge Mata

A couple of hours ago we had a talk with tech entrepreneur Jorge Mata here at IE Business School. Jorge was the founder of MyAlert in 1999 and since then founded many other businesses and also started funding high tech start ups himself. You can read more about him on his LinkedIn profile.

The discussion was based on Jorge's experience in raising capital for his ventures. So far he raised more than 100 million dollars since he started working as an entrepreneur with MyAlert in 1999 at the age of 36. He explained that at that time it was relatively easy to get money since everybody believed that the Internet was a great opportunity with a great future potential. Everything changed, though, in the beginning of 2000 when scalability became key. Personally, I've always believed in the importance of a business plan to minimize lack of focus and Jorge replied by saying that in innovative ventures the problem is that in most cases the business model is not clear and it's key to be flexible in that regard and to adapt. Even though having revenues is still not mandatory to obtain funding, according to him more investors are paying attention to them, mainly in Europe.

One of the most interesting points of this conversation for me was his discussion of not giving away too much of the company in the beginning but balancing resources for growth with the potential gains of a future sale. Questioned about being more a fund raiser than an entrepreneur, since he is known for developing his businesses and selling them, Jorge smiled saying that there are different entrepreneurs, those who always want to do different things and those who want to work on the same thing forever. Well, from the corporate world I can see that this was quite common in the previous company I worked for with directors jumping up and down in the organizational chart. Also, I guess for someone who has innovation as the fuel to move on, it must be really tedious not to go for the next venture.

A last thing I would like to mention was the importance Jorge puts on the relations he has with angel investors where in most cases there isn't clear contracts stating responsibilities as it's the case with venture capital funds and industrials. He said that "since this relationship is highly based on trust I make sure these people always get their money back. They believe in you and by establishing these strong ties you can always rely on them in the future." This is something that I also find very important and I must say that a good network, where there's trust is fundamental for personal and professional growth.