Jennifer Kho with Greentech media just posted an interview with Sue Preston discussing the state of affairs cleantech early stage funding. Sue, an Angelsoft user and the manager of the CALCEF angel fund, points out that the pressures for VCs to go big in greentech has cauesed an even more prominent funding gap in the $250,000 to $5 million range.
With cleantech/greentech being fairly capital intensive and really popular right now it makes sense that the gap is widening. Glad to have CALCEF stepping in to help out!
The New York Angels and Golden Seeds hosted a speech on Angel Investing 101 in Tribeca last nite and the room was packed with over 200 entrepreneurs looking for money and knowledge. Our CEO, David S. Rose, spoke for about an hour about the economics and process-flow of angel investing. Among the things he talked about were:
Who angel investors are (demographics of an angel)
How angel investors make money (or very often lose money!)
How angels think about your valuations: why they need certain returns on such high risk.
What types of characteristics angels look for in entrepreneurs and companies.
The process that an angel group and angel go through in filtering and searching for deals
The last point was, of course, tied into Angelsoft and especially the new Open Deals platform, but was really very informative for entrepreneurs. Many may not understand the volume of deals that angels and angel groups see - and in what format they see it in. By understanding how angels will see a deal, entrepreneurs can laser target their pitch better and make sure that they bubble to the top of the list.
David gave a very similar speech at SXSW a few weeks ago, and I’m sure he will do it again. Whatever your affiliation with the early stage equity community is, if you get the chance to hear David talk on this topic, you will not be disappointed.
We try to have every release bring something special and useful to our users - but in our view this last release has been extra special.
For a complete list of updates click here. Below are some highlights:
OPEN DEALS
Deal sharing and syndication between groups has long been a major benefit of working together on Angelsoft, but what if you’re not sure who might be interested in co-investing a specific deal? Introducing Open Deals, where Group Managers can post deal notices that any of the over 300 angel groups who use Angelsoft can respond to.
Post a Deal Notice to Open Deals - Got an interesting deal, but not enough interested investors in your group? Post a notice to the Open Deals space, where over 300 angel groups worldwide can see it. The notice will include the application and a note from you, but none of the attached documents or entrepreneur’s contact information. Interested group administrators will be able to contact you directly from the deal page.
Browse & Review Deals - Open Deals also has a number of deals submitted directly by Entrepreneurs. Sort by distance, industry, average ratings, or number of views. Watch videos and read business summaries. Rate and review a deal to share your view with the Angel community.
Refer a Deal to Your Group - When you see an Open Deal that seems interesting, you can refer it to your group with one click! The deal will be added to a special sub-folder of your New Submissions.
Request to Co-Invest - Found a great deal shared by another group on Open Deals? Write a quick note to the group administrator who posted it, and let them know you are interested! In case there’s a good fit, they will be able to share the deal with your group with one click!
Continue as Usual - Open Deals is an open directory completely separate from your group that you can use to gather additional investment for a deal or augment your dealflow during a quiet month. None of your deals will EVER be displayed there unless YOU submit them.
ENHANCED DEAL SYNDICATION
Sharing deals with groups and individuals has been simplified in this release. We added:
Sharing Options Page - Angelsoft offers a variety of ways to share deals with others: referrals, co-investments, adding guests, and Open Deals. On the new Sharing page, we clearly explain each option.
Sharing Drop-down Menu - We have collected all sharing options under a single Share drow-down menu, available on the Deal List and the Deal Dashboard. Now you can share quickly, share easily, and share often!
Refer/Co-Invest by State - Referring and Co-Investing now lets you look at the group list according to country and state. Discover groups in your vicinity, and share your deal information with them directly!
Co-Investment Improvements - Co-Invested deals from another group will now show your group’s logo, and not the logo of the originating group.
DECLINED DEAL EMAILS
We believe that entrepreneurs deserve to get an email when their application has been declined. And you deserve an easy tool to send them with:
Create a Declined Note Template - Create a Declined Note template directly from Group Preferences, and use it as a basis for every declined notice.
Send Individual Declined Emails - When moving a single deal to the Inactive folder, you will be given a chance to write a personalized note to the entrepreneur, based on your template.
Send Bulk Declined Emails - When moving multiple deals to the Inactive folder, you will be given a chance to write a generic declined note based on your template and send it to all the right entrepreneurs.
FULL SPEED AHEAD!
As always, we strive to make Angelsoft faster, more reliable, and more enjoyable for our users. This time we worked on cleaning some old code, to improve speed and responsiveness.
The Deal Dashboard - The Deal Dashboard now loads faster than ever!
Deal Messages and Documents - We have optimized Deal Messages and Deal Documents to allow for faster loading.
As always, we look forward to your feedback, and hope that you will benefit from these new features! Please visit our blog and sound off, if you’d like to share your comments with others.
Mark LaRosa, Ryan Pipkin, and Matt Rosen represented Angelsoft at the ACA Southeast Angels Conference last week in Greensboro, NC. The event was organized and hosted by Troy Knauss and the Piedmont Angel Network. There were over 60 investors representing 25 groups in attendance.
Attendees heard presentations from 11 companies that were selected by a committee of regional GM’s prior to the conference. In addition, Ryan gave a presentation on using Angelsoft to facilitate deal syndication.
Angelsoft sponsored a dinner on Thursday that was just delicious, the weather was perfect, and UNC made The Final Four…
The only thing anyone was left asking was…when could we do it again?
Following the SW Angel Summit, I attended the University of Arizona Innovation Day 2008 business plan competition. The angels from the SW Angel summit were invited to judge the event, and I got to tag along.
All in all, I was very impressed with the quality of the deals presenting at the event. We got to walk through a trade show to pick out the deal we were interested, and then we split into two “screening committees” to see the 6 companies we selected pitch.
The deals I watched included a bike sharing program for universities, an affordable housing company using international shipping containers, and a rural solar electrification company looking to do project development. It was intentional to group together the deals with a social agenda.
In the end our group of investors elected to give an Angelsoft “most angel-like” deal to Ubike, the bike sharing team, and to Cookie Fusion, which was a retail concept based on rapid baking of customized cookies that presented to the other team of judges.
