Victory the Podcast [ActionPark Media]
[QUOTE]I am not only providing capital, I am providing partnership and mentorship. I am working right now with an awesome minority businessman who wants to take the restaurant industry by storm providing eco-friendly solutions to all restaurants and venues, like cups and straws and spoons that normally destroy the environment. And I am looking into new opportunities all the time where I can be involved and focus on quality, not just quantity. For me, life isn’t just about money. It’s about connection. It’s about energy, the energy we all get the chance to bring to the party for our brief time on Earth. Are you bringing good positive energy with a focus, or not?/QUOTE]
Mr. Ted Foxman:
He began his career at Eagle Test Systems, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment based in Chicago, where he served eight years as Chief Operating Officer.
During his tenure, he personally oversaw the sale of more than $550M in company stock, including a $110M investment from TA Associates, a leading $12B technology private equity firm. In 2006, he led the Company’s IPO & Secondary Public Offering for $100M & $95M, respectively, and in 2008, led the sale of Eagle Test to Teradyne (NYSE: TER) for $365M.
Following the sale of Eagle Test, Ted and his wife, Laura, spent the next 8 years focusing on their four children, and in late 2016, they moved to Los Angeles. Since 2016, Ted has established multiple businesses, including Bedford Road Entertainment, a management, financing and creative firm focused on the development and production of feature film and television content. He also established a luxury real estate development firm, which currently has more than $30M in development in Beverly Hills. Ted also established an investment group focused on making investments with high social impact in minority owned businesses, and in early 2019, finalized a partnership with Happy Ice, a frozen dessert company founded by a young, Black entrepreneur named Lemeir Mitchell.
Ted holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin Madison and a Juris Doctor from the DePaul College of Law-Chicago.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what made you decide to become an angel or VC?
Itwas a combination of a couple of things. First, I made some money in my own first chapter, so I was in a position to do something with it. Second, my mindset has always been to find a way to do something good. So, I thought, why just settle for making money on an investment when you can also try to find a way to help make someone’s life better or give them an opportunity that they may otherwise not have? I was lucky to have the opportunities I did in my life, so I want to give access to others to learn from my experience, not just write a check and walk away.
What you are doing is not very common. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were going to focus on social impact investing in particular? Can you share the story with us?
No Aha moment, per se. Back in around 2007 or 2008, I was introduced to a man who had an opportunity as a minority to buy into the Burger King franchise system. He needed money to make that happen. It seemed like a great opportunity to make money and help him get a chance to take advantage of this opportunity, so I did just that. We ended up buying 19 or 20 franchises together on that deal.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
I didn’t start my career as a VC investor. I started it by being an entrepreneur, and I achieved respectable success doing that. Because I was successful and gained a lot of experience at a very young age, I knew I had something more to pass on to people besides money. I had successfully grown and sold a piece of our family business to a large Private Equity group by the time I was 28, taken the company public on NASDAQ by 31 and then sold the business outright by the age of 33. That was the kind of career most people (including myself) had only dreamed of achieving in a lifetime and I did it before I was 34 years old. When I started to invest personally in other people’s businesses, I honestly did not see huge financial success right away. But because I was helping them get their dreams off the ground, I felt good about being involved. When you are investing, sometimes you make money, sometimes you lose money. But when you are investing in making someone’s life and their opportunities better, you win every time, regardless of the financial outcome. So even if I have lost money, I keep learning and the people I’ve worked with learn something too. That, to me, is a more fulfilling route to success.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person or mentor to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are a few people — chiefly among them: my two grandfathers and my father. I come from a line of men that couldn’t work for someone else and wanted to do things their own way. I am the same way. One of my grandfathers came to the United States in 1949 after escaping from the Nazis. He had $25 to his name, a wife and two young children to support. He was 36 when he arrived in Chicago to begin his new life. By the time he retired, he owned his own retail clothing and shoe store, and had given his two sons stores of their own to run. My other grandfather came out of World War 2 and became extremely entrepreneurial, buying pianos by the trainload from people in the South and selling them to rich people in the North and on the West Coast. He made his fortune doing that until all the pianos that were bought and sold in that way were gone and he had to reinvent himself. He owned hardware stores and became a commercial builder. Then at the age of 70 he started an art reselling business instead of retiring. He taught me to always evolve. And my own father made the huge leap of leaving a steady job with a new wife and me as a 1-year-old to support to go start his own thing. He made his business into a success and kept it going until I joined when I was 25. Together, we turned that business into a global technology manufacturing brand with 17 offices worldwide, traded on NASDAQ and eventually sold to a company today that is worth almost $15 Billion. They all served as great examples to me, and my father gave me the opportunity to learn with hands-on experience and prove what I could do.
Mr. Ted Foxman:
He began his career at Eagle Test Systems, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment based in Chicago, where he served eight years as Chief Operating Officer.
During his tenure, he personally oversaw the sale of more than $550M in company stock, including a $110M investment from TA Associates, a leading $12B technology private equity firm. In 2006, he led the Company’s IPO & Secondary Public Offering for $100M & $95M, respectively, and in 2008, led the sale of Eagle Test to Teradyne (NYSE: TER) for $365M.
Following the sale of Eagle Test, Ted and his wife, Laura, spent the next 8 years focusing on their four children, and in late 2016, they moved to Los Angeles. Since 2016, Ted has established multiple businesses, including Bedford Road Entertainment, a management, financing and creative firm focused on the development and production of feature film and television content. He also established a luxury real estate development firm, which currently has more than $30M in development in Beverly Hills. Ted also established an investment group focused on making investments with high social impact in minority owned businesses, and in early 2019, finalized a partnership with Happy Ice, a frozen dessert company founded by a young, Black entrepreneur named Lemeir Mitchell.
Ted holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Wisconsin Madison and a Juris Doctor from the DePaul College of Law-Chicago.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what made you decide to become an angel or VC?
Itwas a combination of a couple of things. First, I made some money in my own first chapter, so I was in a position to do something with it. Second, my mindset has always been to find a way to do something good. So, I thought, why just settle for making money on an investment when you can also try to find a way to help make someone’s life better or give them an opportunity that they may otherwise not have? I was lucky to have the opportunities I did in my life, so I want to give access to others to learn from my experience, not just write a check and walk away.
What you are doing is not very common. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were going to focus on social impact investing in particular? Can you share the story with us?
No Aha moment, per se. Back in around 2007 or 2008, I was introduced to a man who had an opportunity as a minority to buy into the Burger King franchise system. He needed money to make that happen. It seemed like a great opportunity to make money and help him get a chance to take advantage of this opportunity, so I did just that. We ended up buying 19 or 20 franchises together on that deal.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
I didn’t start my career as a VC investor. I started it by being an entrepreneur, and I achieved respectable success doing that. Because I was successful and gained a lot of experience at a very young age, I knew I had something more to pass on to people besides money. I had successfully grown and sold a piece of our family business to a large Private Equity group by the time I was 28, taken the company public on NASDAQ by 31 and then sold the business outright by the age of 33. That was the kind of career most people (including myself) had only dreamed of achieving in a lifetime and I did it before I was 34 years old. When I started to invest personally in other people’s businesses, I honestly did not see huge financial success right away. But because I was helping them get their dreams off the ground, I felt good about being involved. When you are investing, sometimes you make money, sometimes you lose money. But when you are investing in making someone’s life and their opportunities better, you win every time, regardless of the financial outcome. So even if I have lost money, I keep learning and the people I’ve worked with learn something too. That, to me, is a more fulfilling route to success.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person or mentor to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are a few people — chiefly among them: my two grandfathers and my father. I come from a line of men that couldn’t work for someone else and wanted to do things their own way. I am the same way. One of my grandfathers came to the United States in 1949 after escaping from the Nazis. He had $25 to his name, a wife and two young children to support. He was 36 when he arrived in Chicago to begin his new life. By the time he retired, he owned his own retail clothing and shoe store, and had given his two sons stores of their own to run. My other grandfather came out of World War 2 and became extremely entrepreneurial, buying pianos by the trainload from people in the South and selling them to rich people in the North and on the West Coast. He made his fortune doing that until all the pianos that were bought and sold in that way were gone and he had to reinvent himself. He owned hardware stores and became a commercial builder. Then at the age of 70 he started an art reselling business instead of retiring. He taught me to always evolve. And my own father made the huge leap of leaving a steady job with a new wife and me as a 1-year-old to support to go start his own thing. He made his business into a success and kept it going until I joined when I was 25. Together, we turned that business into a global technology manufacturing brand with 17 offices worldwide, traded on NASDAQ and eventually sold to a company today that is worth almost $15 Billion. They all served as great examples to me, and my father gave me the opportunity to learn with hands-on experience and prove what I could do.
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