About

Our Philosophy

Our Philosophy

We believe investors in early stage companies should have access to best practices and professional tools to support the entrepreneurial community worldwide and achieve superior outcomes.

 

Insights and education, combined with powerful portfolio management tools, allow investors to understand their investing better, learn faster and make necessary adjustments to select the highest quality opportunities and drive superior returns. 

Our Story

Our Story

As long-time angel investors and co-directors of Launchpad Venture Group, we learned that to achieve returns in early stage investing, you have to pay attention to the details: track company progress, understand which companies and industries have the highest growth potential, analyze key performance metrics, and monitor upcoming events like warrant expirations and escrow payouts.

 

Diversification into a large number of companies is key to success as an angel investor, so you quickly outgrow basic tools like spreadsheets, email folders and paper files. As your portfolio grows and the number and complexity of rounds expands, all those emails, signature pages, documents and investor reports start to pile up and go ignored, and the problem only snowballs with follow-ons, note conversions, warrants, and tax deadlines. You work too hard for your returns to accept losses due to inadequate record-keeping.  By 2012, with a large and growing portfolio we were feeling this pain acutely, and we saw it was happening to our peers as well.

 

Having spent most of our careers in the software industry, we launched our own startup and set out to build a powerful portfolio solution to address the challenges of managing and valuing early stage investments. Today we use Seraf to track the Launchpad group portfolio, as well as our personal portfolios and all three of the funds we operate. Thousands of angels, VCs, funds, family offices, accelerators and angel groups around the world have joined us, making Seraf the leader in early stage portfolio management.

 

And because we are passionate about investing in startups, in the fall of 2014 we launched The Seraf Compass to provide early stage investor education and share learning, experiences and insights with the community. The Compass is an industry-leading collection of free tools, articles, eBooks and videos, organized into advanced courses & topics, and has been awarded one of the best angel investing blogs by BPlans and Personal Income.

 

Welcome to Seraf. We love it, our colleagues and customers love it, and we hope you will too.

Seraf Leadership

Hambleton (Ham) Lord is an active member of the Boston entrepreneurial community. In the early part of his career he was on the founding team of three software companies: MicroChem Technologies, Polygen and Advanced Visual Systems.

In addition to his role as a Co-Founder of Seraf, Ham is the Chairman of Launchpad Venture Group, an angel investment group focused on seed and early-stage investments in technology-oriented companies. Through his involvement with Launchpad, Ham has built a personal portfolio of 75+ early stage investments. In addition, he is a general partner and Managing Director of early stage fund Race Point Capital Fund II and a board member or board observer for Cambridge Bancorp, Qstream, and Repsly.

Ham regularly publishes articles and eBooks on all aspects of early stage investing and has co-authored six books which are available at Amazon.com. Due to the combination of roles as an author, advisor and angel group leader, Ham was honored in 2021 with the Hans Severiens Award. This award, presented by the Angel Capital Association, was given in recognition of Ham’s work in advancing the field of angel investing.

Listen to this podcast interview to learn more about Ham's background and approach to investing: Super Angel Investor & Startup Founder: A Conversation with Ham Lord.

 

Christopher Mirabile is the Chair Emeritus of the Angel Capital Association, Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group, and a general partner and Managing Director in early stage funds Race Point Capital Fund I & II. Earlier in his career Christopher served as a public CFO with IONA Technologies PLC, a management consultant with Price Waterhouse's Strategic Consulting Group, and as a corporate and securities lawyer with Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault.

In addition to his role as a Co-Founder of Seraf, Christopher is a full-time angel and an active member of the Boston-area angel investing community. Not only does he help manage Launchpad’s portfolio of 70+ companies, he has personally invested in over 65 start-up companies and is a limited partner in five specialized angel funds. Christopher is also a board member, advisor and mentor to numerous start-ups, and a frequent panelist and speaker on entrepreneurship and angel-related topics.

He serves as an adjunct lecturer in Entrepreneurship in the MBA program at Babson, regularly publishes articles and eBooks on all aspects of early stage investing, and has co-authored several books which are available at Amazon.com. For these reasons he was honored in 2021 with the Angel Capital Association’s Hans Severiens Award, a national award given in recognition of the recipient’s work in advancing the field of angel investing.

Listen to this podcast interview to learn more about Christopher's background and approach to investing: Angel with a Plan: A Conversation with Christopher Mirabile.

 

Seraf Empowers Investors Worldwide

Seraf Empowers Investors Worldwide

$10.1B

In Assets

19,800

Portfolio Companies

205,055

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