We congratulate Stephanie Hanbury-Brown for winning the 2008 Hans Severiens Award at the ACA Summit in San Diego. Stephanie is the founder of GoldenSeeds, which invests in women-led and women-run organizations. This award is quite prestigeous in the angel investment community and Stephanie is truly worthy of the award in how she has not only promoted and advanced angel investing for women, but the angel investing community as a whole.

Stephanie had the following comments on her experience with Angelsoft:

Mark I LaRosa :: May.16.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Angel Investor, Angelsoft 2.0, Angelsoft Company, Endorsements :: Comments

By popular demand, Angelsoft held its first User Group meeting on May 7th as part of the Angel Capital Association annual conference in San Diego.

There were over 50 people at the standing-room only event, with groups coming from as far as Central America, Maine, Canada, and New Zealand.

The feedback had been that our users really wanted to hear from other users, so we let them do the talking. Our CEO, David S Rose, kicked off the user group meeting with an introduction and very energetic presentation of the Angelsoft vision. After that the users took over.

Continue Reading »

Evan Bartlett :: May.15.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Angel Investor, Angelsoft Company, Events :: Comments

Here at Angelsoft, we are rapidly preparing for our first User Group meeting co-inciding with the ACA Summit next week in San Diego.

The theme of the user group meeting is: Unlocking the Network: Sharing Deals with Angelsoft and we have several users slated to speak on the topic. They will cover everything from sharing deals internally, with other groups, and now with OPEN Deals.

If you are an Angelsoft user and you have not yet RSVP’d, please do so immediately as space is limited and running out fast! If you come to the user group event, we will be sure to have your ACA conference materials ready for you, so that you do not have to wait on line at the opening reception.

The event is May 7th, 3-5 PM in the Windsor C conference room located on the third floor of the hotel.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Mark I LaRosa :: May.01.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Angel Investor :: Comments

One of the toughest steps in the investment process is getting back to the entrepreneur to let them know that your group is not going to proceed with their funding request. It can be an emotionally charged situation, and because there are so many more deals out there than capital to fund them, it has to be a regular part of your investment group’s activity.

If we look at the positive side of turning down a funding request, we see that many groups use this as an opportunity to provide feedback to the entrepreneurs. Its a critical part of the process where the investors are able to give something valuable back to the entrepreneur, and an opportunity to set them on the path to finding funding from another source or possibly from that group at a later date.

To help with this process we’ve added the ability to send a “declined email” to the entrepreneur.

Take a look at the tutorial below and let us know what you think!

1) Select the deal or deals you would like to decline

Check the box next to the name of the deal, or check the boxes next to the name of all the deals you would like to decline. This feature works in bulk.

Continue Reading »

Evan Bartlett :: Apr.29.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Tutorials :: Comments

So, you have a deal with some serious interest from your group, but not enough to do the full round. This is a great opportunity for you to leverage the Angelsoft network, and get connected to other investment groups nearby. With a couple simple steps, you can post your deal to Open Deals, making a preview available to other Angelsoft users, so they can contact you to discuss the potential of co-investing.

Nothing more than a preview will be shared, and once you are contacted you can still decide how you would like to proceed with this group. Its a very fast and efficient way to find more capital, and a huge value you can offer the entrepreneurs applying to your group.

Enjoy the Tutorial!

1) Select the deal you would like to Co-invest

Continue Reading »

Evan Bartlett :: Apr.24.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, HowTo, Tutorials :: Comments

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?

Matt Rosen :: Apr.01.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Angel Investor, Angelsoft Company, Entrepreneur, Syndication :: Comments

In the first part of last week I attended the first ever Southwest Regional Angle Summit organized by Bob Morrison, the Executive Director of the Desert Angels. The event brought together several local angel investors along with representation from the Desert Angels, New Mexico Angels, ATIF, Tech Coast Angels, and some VC funds.

Though this was a regional even, I dropped in from NYC, and Frank Peters of the Tech Coast Angels made the trip in from southern California. I think we were both quite impressed with what was going on!

Since this was the first year, Bob simply established a suggested agenda, and the conversation was pretty free form. We discussed everything from improving communication among angel networks for sharing deals to marketing angel groups online, and capitalizing on tech transfer opportunities.

Continue Reading »

Evan Bartlett :: Mar.31.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Angel Investor, Events :: Comments

Almost a month ago, I sat down on the phone with Eric Rosenfeld, manager and co-founder of the Oregon Angel fund (OAF), to learn more about the early stage community in Portland. Eric is what you can call “heavily involved” in the early stage investing. Aside from OAF, he sits on the board of the Oregon Entrepreneurs network, and is a member of the Portland Angel Network, the Portland Venture Group, and the Oregon Sustainability Angels. On top of all that he still manages to find time to manage Capybara Ventures.

Now, for our chat:

EB: How would you describe the early-stage venture community in the Portland area?

ER: I would say on the investors side of things, that Portland is highly organized and extremely collaborative given its size. The Oregon entrepreneur network has been instrumental in putting a lot of the pieces in place. There are many options for investors, as there are many different groups and models to get involved with. There are Angel funds, Angel networks, and even a yearly venture competition. There are over 55 investors in the 2008 Oregon Angel Fund and we’ll shoot to invest $2.4m in 4 Oregon companies over the next 9 months.

Continue Reading »

Evan Bartlett :: Mar.24.2008 :: Angel Group Manager, Endorsements :: Comments