The event had any interesting topics discussed. The first of which was a panel, led by Bruce McCormack of the Bellingham Angels and Elaine Kong of the Washington Technology Center all about how to syndicate and share deals throughout the region. Since several of the people in the room were Angelsoft users, there was quite a bit of lively discussion around how to use Angelsoft to accelerate deal flow amongst the region.
David S. Rose then sat on a panel with several angels to discuss best practices for angel groups. There was great discussion on how to find and promote the best deals, on whether to charge application fees, on whether or not to coach the entrepreneurs, and also how to get members more involved. Ultimately, some great ideas were shared amongst all the members.
Over lunch, David S. Rose spoke to all attendees about the future of Angelsoft and how Angelsoft is transforming the world of early stage investment. He compared Angelsoft to great business network sites like LinkedIn. David discussed how Angelsoft, with its 350 organizations and growing, has created the premiere network of individuals and groups doing early stage investing, and like LinkedIn - now has the ability to elevate this network through optional premium services to help all the individuals in the network.
The response was very positive, and Angelsoft's persistence in finding and signing up the best and biggest early stage investment groups over the past year, is really starting to pay off for both Angelsoft and all of the organizations on board!
A new angel group in Northen California, the San Joaquin Angels, has selected Angelsoft as its exclusive provider for deal flow software. We are very excited about this new addition. They had these kind words to say:
"San Joaquin Angels (SJA), a newly formed Angel group serving San Joaquin County and surrounding areas in Northern California had its official "kick-off" meeting February 20th at the new downtown Stockton Sheraton Hotel. Over 60 persons responded to the invitation to hear more about SJA and its opportunities Almost two years ago, county-wide San Joaquin Partnership researched area economic needs and updated its strategic plan.
Marianne Hudson with the Angel Capital Association recently e-mailed out a newsletter from the Angel Capital Education Foundation that contained several great articles that could help group managers get a better idea of how to successfully manage an Angel Network.
The emphasis here is on knowing your customer, and in this case it's the individual Angel investor. To attract and retain investors, the group needs to know what the priorities are for these investors, and needs to have a strategy for meeting each of these priorities. The article discusses how investors are in it for the fun, for investing in good deals, and to have an impact on their business and entrepreneurial communities.
We're proud to present Angelsoft 2.4. This release includes many great new features we think you'll enjoy. We have 175 updates in total, including 111 bug fixes, 56 improvements, and 8 new features. For the complete release notes click here. We've made some big improvements to the entrepreneur application process. We encourage you to try and submit a new application to your group to see how much better it is!
VIDEO PITCHES
Ever wonder who was behind a new submission or wished you could see a live demonstration of the product? Well now you can! Entrepreneurs can now upload or record a short video pitch, up to 5 minutes in length, which you can watch directly on Angelsoft.
Upload or Record Video with Webcam
Entrepreneurs can upload a previously prepared video file in one of 14 popular formats, or record a new pitch using their webcam. Angelsoft allows them to preview the video, delete and record again, until they are ready to save and submit to the group.
Finding Deals with Videos
Deals with video have the gray [VIDEO] indicator following the deal name on the Deal List. They also have an indicator in all New Submissions notices, Deal Alert emails and Deal Event invitations concerning them. This way you can quickly identify which of your new submissions contain a video pitch.
Watching a Video
Group members can watch a video pitch directly from the Deal Dashboard or expand it to full-screen view.
ENTREPRENEUR FEATURES
Funding Application Manager
Entrepreneurs can now easily manage their applications in a single place if they apply to more than one group.
Additional Documents Manager
Entrepreneurs can now upload additional documents in addition to submitting them through e-mail, so they won't overload deal members with e-mail messages.
Improved Upload Experience
Entrepreneur document uploading has been improved with these important functions: A progress bar for uploads, the ability to cancel uploads that are taking too long, and a warning when documents have been uploaded but not yet submitted to the group. Documents can also be easily deleted and replaced. This allows entrepreneur to take charge of their documents and make sure that the latest version is always available to the group.
GROUP FEATURES
Smart "New Submission" Sub-Folders
Where do new submissions come from? Three new smart sub-folders under New Submissions will tell you whether a deal was added by your administrators, through your website, or referred from another group.
Create New Deal from the Deal List Creating a new deal is a common operation for group managers. So we decided to put it right there on the Deal List, where group managers usually spend most of their time.
"Refer" and "Co-Invest" Recipient List
When you Refer or Co-Invest a deal to another group, you can now click to see a list of Group Administrators your message will go to. Did you promise Bill that you'll refer a deal to his group? Now you can make sure that Bill is actually on the receiving end!
One-Line Pitch
There's now one more required field on all entrepreneur applications: the one-line pitch. This one line description of the deal will go on the Deal List, instead of the truncated Business Summary, and should allow for better and quicker sorting.
BUGS AND IMPROVEMENTS
Group Administrators Are Now Always Deal Admins
Fixing a previous issue with Deal Admin privileges, all Group Administrators will now have implicit Deal Admin rights. The Deal Admin checkboxes for them will always be checked and disabled.
Improved Messaging Stability
We've sorted through multiple previous issues with messaging, including compatibility with different mail servers, and various errors involving Deal Messages. We believe that this new release will be much more stable when e-mailing through Angelsoft.
Application Errors Fixes
Using the information from the error tracking features that we've implemented in the previous release, we've located and resolved some of those hard to locate bugs that have been causing Errors to pop up for some users. We believe that this release will be even more stable.
Once again, we’d like to thank you all for your support, ongoing involvement, and enthusiasm: they keep us going.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts about this new release in the comments section on our blog.
The Angelsoft team made several appearances over the past couple weeks on the West coast.
Some highlights include:
1) Evan Bartlett attended the Keiretsu Forum Expo in Palm Desert on January 28th. The event was co-hosted by Steve Weiss, and the Coachella Valley Angel Network.
The winner of the Most Valued Company Competition was a fun wine oriented company called Bottlenotes. They describe themselves as "a personalized sommelier service delivering wine tailored to their members’ personal tastes using proprietary matching technology."
2) Mark LaRosa and Evan Bartlett then went to meet with Sue Preston in the new offices of the California Clean Energy Fund I . The early stage fund will be closed soon, and when they start taking in deals, they will be using Angelsoft to manage their deal flow!
Mark LaRosa and Ryan Pipkin headed out to Utah last Wednesday to attend the Wayne Brown Institute's 24th Annual Investor’s Choice® Venture Capital Conference. 23 domestic companies pitched their opportunity to more than 200 investors and equity capital providers at this year's conference.
Wayne Brown partnered with us last fall when the Institute launched Angelsoft to serve as the platform for both Investor’s Choice® and The Deal Forum. Five Utah-based angel groups, moderated by USTAR, sat down together for a panel entitled "FINDING YOUR FIRST DOLLAR - Trends in Angel Investing in Utah." Olympus Angels, Salt Lake Life Science Angels, Park City Angels, Utah Angels, and Southern Utah Dixie Angels discussed what they look for, and how to get in front of them for consideration. All five groups on the panel use Angelsoft.
And then we got to ski with THIS GUY!!! Dean Cummings, an Olympic skier, former member of the U.S. Ski Team, the World Extreme Skiing Champion of 1995, and owner of H2O Guides, a heli-ski business in Alaska, volunteered his time at the Investor Ski Day following the conference to take some of us on the slopes and teach us a thing or two. Mark and I couldn't pass it up. Skiing with him was ... in a word ... awesome!
David S. Rose was recently profiled in Garr Reynolds' blog, Presentation Zen, in reference to his "Pitch Coach" title. David provides advice to entrepreneurs on how to raise money. David has been mentioned in Garr Reynolds' book and this post adds some of the advice that did not make it into the book.
David S. Rose, Angelsoft's CEO, doesn't think so despite what Stephen Brotman, founder of the $2 billion Greenhill SAVP venture capital firm, predicted.
RAIN SOURCE® CAPITAL UNVEILS WEB TOOLS FOR RAIN ANGEL NETWORK
RAIN Angel Network To Use Angelsoft® For Funding Local Entrepreneurs
FEBRUARY 1, 2008, ST. PAUL, MN: RAIN Source® Capital, manager of the country's largest network of angel funds, announces a collaboration with Angelsoft to manage deal flow and member communication. The RAIN network's adoption of the Angelsoft® Internet-based platform will make it easy for entrepreneurs to apply for funding and gives the RAIN Funds’ accredited investors a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing new opportunities and collaborating both within and between the local RAIN funds.
RAIN Source Capital's RAIN Funds provide early stage investments to start-up companies in amounts up to $3 million, with each fund having a specific focus chosen by its members. RAIN funds are currently active in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Idaho, with the network rapidly expanding to other states.
“Collaborating among all of the RAIN funds with the Angelsoft platform will help us continue to grow our network of funds, improve our due diligence and communication, and ultimately fund the best new companies," said Steven Mercil, President and CEO of RAIN Source Capital. "The RAIN network's hallmark has always been our proprietary, detailed due diligence process for analyzing new investments, and Angelsoft will go far toward streamlining our collaboration, putting all the necessary information right at the fingertips of all of our investors."
The Angelsoft platform, which will be used by the RAIN network's more than 400 investor members, gives entrepreneurs the tools to develop streamlined, one-page descriptions of their businesses for submission to RAIN Fund investors, and then delivers that information over the Internet directly into the RAIN Source Capital deal management system.
Every angel member of every RAIN Fund in the network has instant, secure access to business plans as they arrive. Once in the system, angel investors and fund managers can organize the entire deal flow process from screening all the way through investment and ultimately exits for the businesses in which they invest.
The Angelsoft platform was developed by New York-based Angelsoft LLC with input from RAIN Source Capital and other large angel organizations. “Adding the 19 RAIN funds to the more than 275 angel groups worldwide that are already connected through the Angelsoft platform is a major benefit for everyone,” said David S. Rose, founder and CEO of Angelsoft. “The organizations using Angelsoft comprise the leading angel groups, funds and networks across the globe, and the RAIN funds will now be able to work seamlessly with others of the world's top angels to bring more smart money into more strong deals.”
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About RAIN Source Capital: RAIN Source Capital (www.rainsourcecapital.com) is a multi-state network of RAIN funds that works with angel investors who are interested in supporting growing companies. RAIN Source helps bring together like-minded angel investors to form individual RAIN funds - and then provides these funds with capital, legal templates, a process for due diligence, management support, access to deal flow and other resources. RAIN funds share expertise, deals and experience between and among RAIN Source Capital’s multi-state network. RAIN funds range in size from seven to 61 members, who have pooled from $500,000 to $2 million, and the network currently has invested more than $25 million in 43 companies.
About Angelsoft: Angelsoft (www.angelsoft.net) is the largest provider of solutions for early-stage investing worldwide. Angel investment groups and networks, venture capital firms, business incubators and entrepreneurs on six continents rely on Angelsoft every day to facilitate deal flow. Its award-winning web-based collaboration tools make it easy for seed-stage investment groups to coordinate and process their deal-flow, all the way from initial contact, screening, and due-diligence and ultimately through funding and beyond. Angelsoft is used by over 275 of the world's largest angel groups; processes thousands of business plans for entrepreneurs each month; and is the exclusive software provider to European Business Angel Network, the British Business Angels Association, and the Canadian National Angel Organization.
