Christopher Comella

Current

Founder at Special Projects

Past

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

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Education

Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business
Colorado State University
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

Maret School
Beauvoir National Cathedral Elementary School

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2 more...

Recommended

1 person has recommended Christopher

Connections

153 connections

Industry

Internet

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. More info: www.buzzpal.com -- www.buzzpal.com/team -- www.buzzpal.com/contact.

Christopher Comella’s Specialties:

Relationship management, deal origination, structuring, negotiating, underwriting, due diligence, deal presenting, obtaining approval (largest deal: $914 million), 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

Founder

Special Projects

(Internet industry)

January 2006 — Present (3 years 11 months)

After realizing some success in venture capital and corporate finance, including through an IPO, Chris took the Red Pill. He quit his cushy Associate V.P. job at a $20 billion company, bought a one-way ticket to Europe, and was in Sweden three days later. He went from $900-million deals, fancy dinners and road shows on Wall Street to no deals, cold pizza and 15kr streetcar rides in Gothenburg, Sweden. And he's glad and thankful.

Since then, Chris has worked on his personal and business interests:

• Studied design, technology, social media, and Web 2.0 apps and business models.

• Conceived, bootstrapped, and built a Web 2.0 concept, brand and business model called BuzzPal, which is a registered trademark in USA and EU. The app is under development. This is Chris's primary special project. More info is at www.buzzpal.com/team

• Participated in Web 2.0 and startup events, including The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam, Reboot in Copenhagen, Seedcamp in London, Google Developer Day in London, Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin (media pass), two Geek Meets in Stockholm, a BarCamp in Amsterdam, more.

• Mentioned in Swedish media: http://bit.ly/WnmJI and video interviewed by ArcticStartup.com.

• Sponsored a Seedcamp and TechCrunch event in London (1st-ever TechCrunchTalk): http://bit.ly/QdDUz.

• Identified, analyzed, bought and sold multiple real estate investments in multiple jurisdictions, achieving strong returns.

• Managed a personal stock portfolio, which emerged unscathed from the '07-'09 bear market. In March 2009, Chris began scaling back into the market, purchasing a handful of fundamentally strong securities, such as Google and Research In Motion. In May 2009, Chris sold his positions, as noted on his blog: http://bit.ly/11zbEt. He will re-enter soon (if he hasn't already).

• Chris has been blogging since 2004. He uses Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

• He participates in OpenCoffee and Ruby user groups in USA and EU.
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

Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business

MBA , Entrepreneurship, Intl. Bus, Finance, Marketing , 1998 — 2000

GPA: 3.6.
GMAT Score: 680 (96th-percentile, at least on that date)

Activities and Societies:

Vice President and Director of Research, Investment Club
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.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School

1983 — 1987
Maret School

1978 — 1983
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.