Chris Comella
Startup founder with MBA and venture finance experience. Been through one NASDAQ IPO as an employee . Originated and managed over $1 billion in investments. Manage personal investments in stocks, bonds, currency, real estate. Moved to EU in 2006
| Headline: | Entrepreneur |
| Work status: | Living The Dream |
| Website: | http://buzzpal.com |
| Location: | Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Groups: | Seedcamp |
| Visas: | American citizen with permenant residence permit in Sweden (EU) |
| Interested in: | Brainstorming, Finding business partners, Finding cofounders, Finding team mates, Meeting new people, Professional opportunities, Promoting my startups, Recruiting for my startup |
| Schools: | Colorado State University, Georgetown University |
FULL BIO
See my full bio at http://buzzpal.com/chrisco
WORK EXPERIENCE
| Employer: | BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party |
| Position: | Founder |
| Time period: | August 2006 - Present |
| Description: | www.startco.eu
StartCo holds, manage, and monetizes domain names, developing the best names into full-fledged websites, and the best websites into full-fledged startups. www.buzzpal.com BuzzPal is a pre-launch Internet startup that will connect people online and offline. We're still in stealth mode, so that's about all we are saying publicly right now. See the website and signup for the private beta for more. While BuzzPal was conceived in August 2006, it was mostly on hold until March 17, 2008, when a potentially fatal issue was overcome. That issue was an objection raised by a company called Buzznet, who has $31 million in venture capital and millions of web users. Pretty exciting David/Goliath story, actually. We won. We are cranking now! We are now in team-building mode. If you're a potential team member, get in touch through the contact form on the website. See http://buzzpal.com/team for more info. |
| Employer: | National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation |
| Position: | Associate Vice President, Structured Finance |
| Time period: | October 2003 - January 2006 |
| Description: | www.nrucfc.org
CFC is a private $20 billion company. --Relationship manager for 20 clients with over $1 billion in electric utility loans. --Generation and Transmission (G&T) loans: Originated over $1.6 billion in short- and long-term loans, investments, guarantees, and letters of credit for acquisitions, interim construction financing, working capital, credit assurance. --Obtained board of directors approval and closed CFC's largest ever loan package: $914 million, of which $414 million was held in portfolio and $500 million syndicated to a group of over 20 global banks. --As part of the above, I reviewed concepts, structured deals, negotiated term sheets, coordinated underwritings, conducted due diligence, facilitated documentation, closings, compliance, reviews, waivers, amendments, etc. --As part of the origination, approval and sales process I prepared and gave presentations to investors and to CFC's credit committee, investment committee and board of directors. |
| Employer: | MCG Capital Corp. |
| Position: | Sponsorship and Underwriting Analyst |
| Time period: | June 1999 - June 2003 |
| Description: | www.mcgcapital.com
MCG (Media & Communications Group) is a principal investment firm specializing in companies with revenues between $20 MM and $200 MM. MCG started life as a Goldman Sachs-funded startup and went public in Dec. 2001. The firm invests in senior and subordinated debt, equity and derivative securities. --Worked on over $150 MM in deals, including new and restructured investments in the newspaper, magazine, newsletter, technology, and telecom industries. --Closed over $76 MM in funded investments in the above mentioned industries. --Planned and executed due diligence, credit analysis and underwriting of new deals, including detailed financial modeling and company, industry and competitive analysis (from both financial and strategic perspectives). --Built detailed financial models to evaluate prospective investments and monitor existing portfolio companies. --Wrote feature articles for MCG newsletter and research reports (both distributed to over 5,000 subscribers). |
| Employer: | HSBC Mortgage Services |
| Position: | Senior Loan Officer |
| Time period: | February 1994 - August 1998 |
| Description: | www.hsbc.com
Parent company website: www.hsbc.com. HSBC Mortgage Corporation is a subsidiary of HSBC Group, the 170 year old global financial services leader with 125 million customers. As of it’s most recent fiscal year end report (31 December 2005), HSBC had approximately 284,000 employees and total assets of $1.5 trillion. Owners’ equity was approximately $98 billion, with total operating income of $62 billion and total net margin of $15 billion. Senior Loan Officer February 1994 – August 1998 --Developed and managed 10 client accounts in the Washington, DC area. --Provided leadership and coordination to team members and outside partners in the eastern U.S. --Designed and implemented targeted direct-sales program that helped increase refinance loan volume by over 20%. --Utilized quantitative analysis methods to narrow universe of prospects for the sales program. --Exceeded production goals and originated mortgages at the rate of $20 million/year (top 10% of company). |
EDUCATION
| University: | Georgetown University |
| Time period: | 1998 - 2000 |
| Degree: | Entrepreneurship, Intl. Bus, Finance, Marketing, MBA |
| University: | Colorado State University |
| Time period: | 1989 - 1993 |
| Degree: | Finance and Real Estate, BSc |
INFORMATION
| Hobbies: | Traveling, skiing, photography, web design, hiking, reading, writing, fishing, attending concerts, shows and other live performances. |
