VC profile: Hatch Graham, ATA Ventures
J. Christian Phillips | Posted: 2004-07-29
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Hatch Dawson Graham
After starting his career with a semiconductor company called American Microsystems, Hatch Graham quickly caught the start-up bug. From there Graham was one of the first 10 employees of Zoran Corporation, which is now a publicly traded company with a valuation around half a billion dollars. He left the public company world about five years ago to return to his passion which is developing technology, turning them into products and building companies.
Graham is one of the only venture capitalists I have spoken with whose goal was actually to be an investor all along. "I had a strategy, and my strategy was to end up in the venture capital world, but the way I would do It was to start companies," said Graham. Now Hatch Graham is one of three founders of ATA Ventures which will be closing its very first fund on September 30th. They are focused on the early stage IT industry, but choose to use their collective knowledge in order to find success.
You played football for Idaho State University, what was your best college football moment?
Within the first two weeks of walking into Idaho State University I found out that everybody on the team was all state or all city type players. The reason that I chose to go play there was because I thought I could just dominate. I started to realize the level of competition. When I came in with my big attitude I got paired up to go one on one with a full back. This guy was 4 years older than me, and I remember tackling him. I nailed him, got him good. As I stood up I thought I was blind. The truth was that I was staring out of my helmet's ear hole. My helmet had been completely twisted sideways, and I thought my nose was broken. That's when it was no longer a sport, but a business.
Tell me about the first fund?
We are having our final close on our fund September 30th which will be $150 million fund. It will be focused on early stage IT companies with an emphasis on integrated technologies. That doesn't necessarily mean semiconductors but it means that it is a piece of equipment where the intellectual property needs to be in low cost but high performance integrated fashion.
The past 10 years have been spent on infrastructure for the internet, and communications. Voice, data, and video have been done in a first generation form. In the next ten years we feel it is going to be about how do you take what's been learned and compress it into a lower cost but higher performance form.
How will you be spending the fund?
We have actually made some investments already, and we are very proud of them because they seem to be quite tremendous. The first one Is NeoPhotonlcs, then Cswltch which uses nanotechnology in the next generation programmable logic device world, and Nanogram, with is a nanotech manufacturing company.
How do you get your deal flow?
We have an average of 25 years of experience per partner in this industry. One way we gather our deal flow is from the network we have built over time. The second way is through colleagues within the venture world. Although we haven't even closed the fund yet, and we don't even have our open sign up, we are already getting calls from other venture firms bringing us into deals.
What is your feeling on venture conferences? Are they effective?
I think they are. The venture capitalists that attend the events are making themselves accessible to anybody that walks up to them and wants to talk. In that way there is no fear for an entrepreneur with a business plan just to strike up a conversation without an introduction. On a normal day they could just be going to the office and having their assistant screen calls or categorizing their emalls and things of that nature. They are opening themselves up to those who may normally never have spoken to.
Do you think that online business plan posting sites work?
I think that the probability that someone's business plan would be picked up from one of those sites is a fraction of a percent of the effectiveness of bulk mailing. I cannot see any venture capitalist spending their time going through that manner of reviewing business plans. In fact, I couldn't even see them asking their associates to do that for them. That is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
What do you like to do in your down time?
There is an 11 year old boy that calls me dad. My son could be a vacuum of 24 hours of my day. The venture capital world actually affords me a very accommodating lifestyle where I can work at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. and evaluate plans and numbers. That allows me to go to his baseball games, and watch him pitch in championship games.
