BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party (www.buzzpal.com)
Göteborg Area, Sweden
- Current
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- Founder at BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party
- Past
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- Associate Vice President, Structured Finance at National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation
- Sponsorship and Underwriting Analyst at MCG Capital Corp.
- Senior Loan Officer at HSBC Mortgage Services
- Education
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- Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business
- Colorado State University
- Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
- Maret School
- Beauvoir National Cathedral Elementary School
- Connections
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76
connections
- Industry
- Venture Capital & Private Equity
- Websites
Christopher Comella’s Summary
PAST: Banking, venture investing (media, communications, publishing and technology), and structured finance (electric G&T, not asset-backed securities!). PRESENT: A) Managing, investing & trading in various assets (mostly stocks and real estate); B) Managing a domain name portfolio; C) Designing and developing BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party (www.buzzpal.com), a pre-launch Web 2.0 startup. Want more info? See www.buzzpal.com and/or use this contact form: www.buzzpal.com/contact.
Christopher Comella’s Specialties:
Relationship management, deal origination, structuring, negotiating, underwriting, due diligence, deal presenting, obtaining approval (largest deal was $914 MM), closing and managing. Also experience in: webmaster, web design, graphic design, advertising networks, affiliate networks, domain name acquisition, management and optimization, web analytics, usability, SEO, copywriting, publishing, blogging, ecommerce, shopping cart integration, customer acquisition, ROI measurement and outsourcing.
Christopher Comella’s Experience
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Founder
BuzzPal - The World Is Your Party
(Internet industry)
August 2006 — Present (2 years)
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. -
Associate Vice President, Structured Finance
National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation
(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Banking industry)
October 2003 — January 2006 (2 years 4 months)
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. -
Sponsorship and Underwriting Analyst
MCG Capital Corp.
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; MCGC; Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)
June 1999 — June 2003 (4 years 1 month)
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). -
Senior Loan Officer
HSBC Mortgage Services
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; HBC; Financial Services industry)
February 1994 — August 1998 (4 years 7 months)
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).
Christopher Comella’s Education
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Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business
MBA, Business, 1998 — 2000
GPA: 3.6.
GMAT Score: 680 (96%)- Activities and Societies:
- Vice President and Director of Research, Investment Club
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Colorado State University
BS, Business, 1989 — 1993
- Activities and Societies:
- Lots of outdoor stuff: skiing, mountain biking, motorcycling, hiking, camping, concerts, golf and disk golf. Lot of road tripping too! And a month in Europe, as far west as Paris and as far east as Warsaw.
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Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School
1983 — 1987
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Maret School
1978 — 1983
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Beauvoir National Cathedral Elementary School
1975 — 1978
Additional Information
Christopher Comella’s Websites:
Christopher Comella’s Interests:
--Upsetting the status quo. --Creating things, works and/or concepts along these lines: fun, useful, artistic, thought provoking, provocative, disruptive. --The study and application of finance, economics, sociology, and psychology as part of my financial market analysis and trading (stocks, bonds, ETFs, currencies and commodities). --The study and application of technology and techniques to measure and improve usability and performance in all aspects of Internet, email, marketing, customer acquisition, conversion, lifetime value, ROI, customer satisfaction. --Traveling, skiing, photography, web design, hiking, reading, writing, fishing, attending concerts, shows and other live performances.
Christopher Comella’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- job inquiries
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
