In this episode, Hall welcomes back Hélène Thibieroz, founder and senior managing partner of We Grow Green Tech. We Grow Green Tech focuses on accelerating growth for green technology innovation and impact by partnering with early to late-stage companies.

In a previous episode, Hélène talked about shifting her career three years ago to enter the green technology space, combining her passion for the environment and love of technology. She strongly believes technology can be successfully applied to create impactful, practical business solutions while making an impact on our future.

In this episode, Hall and Hélène follow up on their previous discussion about the state of green tech and discuss how We Grow Green Tech is currently progressing.

In this episode, Hall welcomes Christian Garces of Texas ColdWorks. Texas ColdWorks is the first state of the art public cold storage complex being developed in Austin, Texas. With over 280,000 SF, it will house food producers, co-packers, and logistic companies.

Before Texas ColdWorks, he was the founder and CEO of Tableaux. A manufacturer of architectural products, both for residential and commercial use. Christian holds a Bachelor of Arts from St. Edward’s University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Texas. He is an entrepreneur with experience investing and managing rental properties going back to the mid-1980s. He was the founder and president of Investors’ Street a securities day trading firm with offices in Austin, Dallas, and Miami. In the late 90s, he was Senior Business Analyst at The Capital Network (Credited with funding 100+ technology companies in central Texas) where he analyzed over 1,000 business ideas and coached hundreds of entrepreneurs and C-Level executives. Since then he has served as Advisor, Mentor & Judge for various organizations including the University of Texas Moot Corp, Texas Venture Labs, Texas Capital Network and Austin Economic Recycling Economic Development Program Reverse Pitch.

For family and friends funding -- no one is getting paid back

Today, we’ll talk about raising funding from family and friends

Many startups launch their business with family and friends funding.

Some entrepreneurs are often reluctant to take money from their family because -- well Thanksgiving turkey tastes different if things don’t work out.

On the other hand, investors view funding from family and friends as an indicator of support.  After all, if your family and friends don’t believe in you why should they.

My recommendation is to go to family and friends and ask for no more than $5K per person and tell them it’s a donation.  No one is getting paid back.  

Most family and friends funding comes from those who want to support you and don’t look for a return. 

This also alleviates the challenge of valuing the business at such an early stage.

If the business does succeed you may want to give back by offering $5K for one of their projects. 

Thank you for joining us for the Startup Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.

Let’s go startup something today!