Session 5:
Financing Sources Panel;
Negotiation Skills
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
6:00pm to 9:00pm Eastern Time, Room: 10-250

Part 1: Financing Sources Panel

You have identified the product/service and the market.   You have settled on a business model and have done your financial projections.    How will you finance the plan?

This session will cover: Bootstrapping the early stages.   Funding from the 3 F's- Friends, Family and Fools.   Angels- who are they and what are they looking for?   Private placements.   Customer financing.  Government grants (e.g., SBIRs).   Consulting- getting someone else to pay for the development, provide a beta site and endorse your idea.   Venture capital.   Bank financing.

You will learn about the institutional constraints and needs of various funding sources.   As a result you will be in a better position to determine if, when and how to approach these sources for financing.

This part of the program will feature a panel of experts discussing different financing sources.

• Nilanjana Bhowmik, Founder & General Partner, Converge
• Mary Tobin, Principal, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures
• Drew Volpe, Founder / Managing Partner First Star Ventures.
• Joshua Wachman, Serial entrepreneur turned early stage investor.

Experienced Technology Innovator and Investor John is the Founder & Managing Director of Two Lanterns Venture Capital, and also the Co-Founder & Former 10-year CEO of MassChallenge, largest startup accelerator on the planet which has graduated 3,000+ startups with cumulative revenue of $billions and over 200,000 jobs.   He also won the MIT $50K in 2007 with Robopsy.  LinkedIn Page

• Where Do Entrepreneurs Get Their Money?  Short YouTube video about financing sources.
• A Beginner's Guide to Venture Capital  How is a Venture Capital Fund structured?  How are VCs compensated?  What does this mean for you?
• Venture Capital Deal Terms  MIT Enterprise Forum presentation.
• "Thinking About Valuation"
• "Dilution – Here Is A Primer of Stock Vocabulary"
• "All Financing Sources Are Not Equal"
• "What Are the Terms? - Part 1: A Preferred Return"
• "What Are the Terms?- Part 2: Investors Need Some Control After Their Checks Are Cashed"
• "What Are the Terms?- Part 3: Run Don’t Walk To The Exit"
• 2023 Angel Funders Report, from the Angel Capital Association

Part 2: Negotiation Skills

How do you negotiate deals and resolve team conflicts?  This session will cover negotiation basics and will feature a negotiation workshop using a real but disguised MIT company formation problem.

Experienced Negotiator Mindy is a co-founder and is Chief for Quality/Customer Satisfaction at Parlance Corporation, makers of speech-recognition telephony applications  LinkedIn Page