At long last, my website has launched!

This is the first post for my new Ampure Capital website blog. Certain parts of this website are not yet functional. I am working on that. Please be patient.

I have been a financial consultant for small businesses in renewable energy (and other similar companies) for the past eight years. These companies include bio-fuels (ethanol and bio-diesel), small hydro, solar, wind, biomass, etc. I have also helped companies that are otherwise environmentally or socially proactive, such as yoga and fitness studios, natural birthing, green retailing, clean water, energy retrofitting, pollution abatement . . . you get the idea. This segment accounts for about half my business. The other half are small businesses in a variety of industries – software, entertainment, tech, IT, etc.

For these companies, I have written plans and helped raise equity and debt capital, won grants, determined (market) strategy, determined the feasibility of potential businesses, created partnerships, sold businesses, achieved valuation expectations, and many other issues that small businesses face. I am a registered series 79 representative.

Previously, I worked for Salomon Smith Barney (which is now part of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney) in their small business mergers and acquisitions group for about 7 years. While we did not specialize by industry, I worked primarily with business valued under $100 million in technology and basic manufacturing. This is where your business will probably be in 5 years given some luck and good guidance. Of course, I hope that we can push the upper end of that range.

I earned an MBA from UCLA Anderson in entrepreneurship and a certificate in corporate environmental management (CEM) from the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara, a University of California wide program for select business school students. I was also a Management Development for Entrepreneurs Fellow (MDE) while at Anderson. Previously, I earned a bachelors degree in math, with minors in chemistry and English from the University of Pennsylvania. Further, I studied honors physics, and basic biology, chemistry (including organic), oceanography, and other basic sciences and engineering. While not a scientist or engineer, I can talk the language and understand the issues.

My strengths are in raising capital, mergers and acquisitions, small business finance, small business consulting, strategy, operations, and attaining desired valuation. If you need advise about how to raise equity or bank financing, dealing with financing sources, setting up and keeping track of your financial accounts, how to penetrate the market, obtain permits, etc. I am your guy. After you are established, if you need to obtain more sophisticated financing, professionalize operations, build out the management team, and achieve exit value goals, again I am your man.

I hope to give my thoughts on at least a weekly basis on this website. I have been researching writing a book about bio-fuels for about three years and I have decided to publish chapters each week or two for an instant ‘peer review.’ I would like to discuss externalities (a pet peeve of mine), why EROEI is a nearly useless metric to evaluate renewable energy, why indirect land use change issues are totally wrong, why deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia are not due to bio-diesel, and many more! Please comment on my posts and don’t pull punches – I have a very thick skin. I may learn something. You might too.

Anyway, you can always reach me at info@ampurecapital.com or at (213) 537-3580. I will try to respond to everyone within 48 hours.