Dave Berkus - Tech Coast Angels
Show #66 Listen (59:31) Download
He's an early member of the Tech Coast Angels and previously served as Chairman and recently as President of the Orange County chapter. He lives in Arcadia, but Orange County has been the center of his business life. He's about to celebrate 50 years of being in business and he never worked for anyone besides himself.











Comments
Frank, during the interview we spent only a moment discussing my newest book, just published by Aspatore Press, entitled "Extending the Runway". Since the book subject is so very appropriate for VC and angel investors and their portfolio executives, I thought I'd paste the description of the book from the back jacket cover here to add depth to the subject. The description follows. The book may be purchased at www.aspatore.com or from amazon or Barnesandnoble.com at whatever their discount from the $149.95 list price.
"Extending the Runway is a must-read book for every C-level executive and venture capitalist who now or has ever managed a fragile, growing young business.
Authored by Dave Berkus, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor acknowledged as "Director of the Year" for early stage businesses by the Forum for Corporate Directors, this book provides thoughtful material to help management and investors gain alignment at the board level upon issues of limited resource allocation toward and beyond breakeven. The book provides tips and describes traps for growing companies, and explores insights into managing for preservation of capital and business growth.
Berkus delves into issues revolving around optimal use of resources such as time, money, relationships, context knowledge and process understanding. He tells real stories of young businesses whose management fell into traps which could have been avoided, and how some extended their runways to make more efficient use of invested funds.
Extending the Runway uses examples and stories from aviation to draw an analogy between trained, disciplined management in the cockpit compared to that in an often chaotic corporate world. The book explores elimination of bottlenecks that impede growth, and common pitfalls the author has experienced first hand as an entrepreneur and in coaching CEO's of over sixty-five portfolio companies in a career that has spanned over fifty years.
This is an easy-reading but powerful text for C-level corporate planning. The last chapter alone provides over fifty discussion topics for senior executives of growing businesses to use in testing their own preparedness and in gaining valuable board level agreement upon issues of strategic importance within growing businesses of any size."
Posted by: Dave Berkus | September 15, 2006 02:44 PM