As an entrepreneur, when you login to Angelsoft you are brought to the My Applications tab where you can manage all of your applications to groups. Recently we added the ability for entrepreneurs to see updates on investor activity relating to your deal.
On the right hand side of the My Applications tab you will find the News Feed
Here is a guide to better understand what each news item means:
– Application rated:
An investor has rated your deal and chose to anonymously share it with you. Investors use a star system, moderating the best opportunities to the top. They rate your deal using a 1-4 star scale on four categories: Management, Market, Product, and Deal Terms. Some groups use the rating system as designed, others use it as a proxy for interest in which case the actual values don't mean anything. Investors can also leave comments which often includes advice for the entrepreneur.
– Application was privately rated:
If the investor does not share their rating, your News Feed will tell you that the application was privately rated. We are actively encouraging investors to share their ratings with entrepreneurs. However, in some cases it would be inappropriate to do so.
- An Investor has reviewed your application:
An investor has clicked on your application and read it over
- New Investment: $100,000 from John Doe, East Coast Angels
An investor has committed funds to your deal
- New Investor: John Doe, East Coast Angels
An investor has expressed interest in funding your deal, but has not entered an investment amount.
- Invitation: Name Of Event:
An investment group has invited you to an event. Clicking on the event name will link you to the details
- Referred from Group1 to Group2:
Angelsoft is a network and groups will often share deals between them. This is called a referral. When your deal is referred, it is sent to the second group as if you had applied to that group directly. A new application will show up on your My Applications tab.
- Group1 invited Group2 to collaborate:
To finish out a round of financing, Angel Groups often need to collaborate on a deal, or co-invest. When this happens, Group2 is invited into Group1s deal room. In this case, you will not see a new application on you’re My Applications tab
- A member of East Coast Angels has referred your application to his group:
An investor has referred your deal from OPENdeals to his investment group for further review.
- Investment Terms updated by John Doe:
An investor has made changes to the investment terms, which can be viewed on the My Investors Tab
- Application posted to Open Deals by John Doe: OPENdeals is an investment community inside Angelsoft. Investors post deals there when they are looking for outside investors to finish out a round. Applications posted by investors are labeled differently than those posted by entrepreneurs.
Once you have submitted your application you will be brought to the Entrepreneur Funding Manager.
From here you can see the number of investors that have viewed your deal, referred your deal into their Angel Group, and the amount of time your have remaining in OPENdeals
On the right hand side is the News Feed, where you will see all investor activity on your application. Investors review submissions to bring the best opportunities to the top of OPENdeals. The investor can choose to share that review with you which will appear in the News Feed.
If an investor is interested, they will refer your deal into their Angel Group’s Angelsoft account for review. Angelsoft is used by most of the world's Angel groups to manage ALL their deals, not just the ones from OPENdeals.
When an investor refers your deal into their group's Angelsoft account, the General Manager is notified by email. That deal shows up at the top of the New Submissions list which is the first thing that the members of the group will see the next time they log in.You will be notified by email of the referral. When you log into the Funding Manager you will see that you have a new section for this group.
A deal-specific email address is included. This allows you to communicate with the investor that referred your deal along with the General Manager of the group. As your deal progresses, you will continue to use this email to communicate with all interested investors.
1. Click the Get Started button on the OPENdeals page
2. Register or Login if you already have an account
3. If you have previously applied to another Angel Group, you will be asked if you want to import your answers from that application.
You can do this at any time by clicking the import button at the top of the screen
4. Fill out your application. This is often the only document that an investor will look at; make sure that you fill it out completely. Do not put “see business plan” in any of the fields. Investors do not look at business plans until much later in the process, if at all.
5. Upload a video pitch or click “Record With Webcam” to record a video using your webcam directly in your browser. A video pitch vastly increases the number of investors who will look at your application.
6. The application will autosave every 10 minutes, but you can click save at the top of the screen at any time. Click Save & Close to finish your application later.
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7. When you are ready, click Submit at the bottom of the page. You will be brought to the payment screen where you will be asked to pay by credit card. The cost to apply to OPENdeals is $250.
Over the years Angel Groups have found that by charging a submission fee, they dramatically reduce the number of frivolous submissions from entrepreneurs. The logic goes that a less than serious entrepreneur will find a fee daunting, while a serious entrepreneur will find the fee a nominal cost of business.
We applied this same logic to OPENdeals and have found that it works. It’s not a perfect system, but it does act as a pretty good filter. Without it, our investor community would be crushed with an influx of low quality deals, and its value would be lost for both entrepreneurs and investors.
In the interest of full disclosure, we operate a global infrastructure and provide world class software tools for both Investors and Entrepreneurs. OPENdeals submission fees help cover some of these costs.
OPENdeals is an investor community open to the 8,000 investors in the 450 groups that use Angelsoft. We have spent 4 years hand-selecting each Angel Group on our system to ensure that their membership is only made up of SEC Accredited Angel Investors.
These are wealthy individuals who have already made their money and are now looking to invest in startup companies. They are not looking to startup another business, and therefore not interested in stealing your idea.
Any of these investors can see your deal and has the option to provide a review. These reviews are used to bring the best opportunities to the top of OPENdeals, similar to Digg. The investor can choose to anonymously share their review with you. You will also see the number of investors that have viewed your deal. We unfortunately cannot tell you who these investors are in order to protect their privacy. However, if they are interested in your deal, they will refer it into their own Angelsoft account for review and you will be notified.
While we wish we could let you in to take a look around, we need to keep it restricted to SEC accredited investors.
What we can do is give you a peek behind the scenes of what OPENdeals looks like to Angels.
Deal Directory
The Deal Directory is where investors can browse through submitted deals by criteria such as location, rating, number of views, and industry.
Summary Information
On the Deal Directory each company is shown with a summary of their information.
This includes:
Company name
The number of views the deal has received (you can also see this number on your Application Manager)
The rating other investors have given the deal (you can see these ratings in the News Feed on the Application Manager if the investor chooses to share it with you)
Whether or not a video is included
The One Line Pitch
Industry
A Deal
Each deal is displayed in a standardized format that Angels are familiar with from their personal Angelsoft accounts.
The answers to your questions are listed in the main section. Your companies vitals such as Management and Financial Information are listed in the side bar on the right.
The video is available to watch as the investor reads through your application
Your documents are available for download. A PDF of your application is automatically generated for the investor to print out (You can also download this PDF by clicking on Preview in your application)
When An Investor Is Interested
If an investor is interested in a deal they can refer it into their own group for further review. At this point you will be notified.
OPEN-deals is made up of a community of investors that rely on each other to moderate the best deals to the top of the pile. Each deal has a Ratings and Reviews section that any accredited investor can add to. The deals with the highest ratings get moderated to the top.
Recently, we gave investors the ability to anonymously share their review with the entrepreneur. The idea is to give entrepreneurs the type of honest feedback they would receive if they were to sit in on an investor meeting. We have received a number of questions in regards to this new feature that I want to address.
Can all the investors in OPENdeals see the review: Yes. OPENdeals is an investor community and they are collaboratively reviewing deals so the best ones rise to the top. Each investor in the community has a reputation, and investors keep the reviewer in mind as they read.
Can I respond to their review: Not at this time. Right now this feature is in its early stages. We wanted to give investors a way to share their comments with you to receive feedback. Think of it as a peek behind the curtain, courtesy of an investor who is willing to be open. We are actively looking for ways to expand upon this feature to make it more balanced.
I received a great review but I wasn’t contacted for further discussions: Many investors are actively involved in OPENdeals. An investor will often rate a great deal that is not right for them or their group.
I received a poor review: An investor decided to share their review with you because they want to help. Negative feedback is often more valuable than positive. They are alerting you to something important that you should know. Take whatever suggestions they make seriously and update your application accordingly.
10,000 investors across 400 Angel Groups have access to OPEN-deals, but what should you expect from your own deal?
Right now submissions with a video average 22 views. That is 22 serious investors, likely from multiple groups, which are reading through your application to see if they are interested. Getting a deal in front of that many investors in such a short period of time is an opportunity that is unrivaled.
Submissions without a video average 13 views per deal, which is a 70% decreases from deals with videos.
21% of submissions to OPENdeals receive at least 1 referral into an Angel Group for further funding consideration.
The best way to make your deal stand out is to take the application process seriously. We have found that entrepreneurs who didn’t feel they got their moneys worth had spelling mistakes, didn’t fill out EVERY section of the application including financials, didn't understand the type of deals Angels invest in (1,2,3), and lacked a video pitch. All of these are vitally important opportunities for you to get an investors attention. You are competing against deals that have all of these components filled out perfectly; make sure you have given that level of consideration to your own application.
As an active angel investor, I am faced with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potential companies with which I can get involved. I receive new business plans every day from people who know what I do; I see all of the deal flow that comes through the professional angel groups to which I belong (such as New York Angels); and recently, with the advent of OPEN-deals, I find myself inexorably drawn to seeing the latest investment opportunities from around the country.
But because of the sheer number of companies involved, I, like most other active angels, tend to make very quick, first-pass decisions as to whether we should even bother to look at a plan, let alone invest. (For example, I personally have no interest in real estate investment deals, movie opportunities, or biotech; the first I've got enough of, the second is too risky even for me, and the third I'm not smart enough to understand. I also don't generally look at deals that are too far away from me geographically...although this is beginning to change with the high quality of deals I've been seeing in OPEN-deals.) This first pass will typically cut by about half the number of companies in my mental in-box.
For most of the rest, however, I have only a limited amount of time to decide which deals warrant further attention. Now, I'd like to say that I carefully read every word of every business plan. But I don't. I could say that instead, I not-so-carefully read most words of most executive summaries. But, umm, I really don't do that either. These days, what happens in practice is that I pop over to OPEN-deals and skim the latest submissions. My eye is immediately drawn to deals that have videos (because the poster frame of the video is prominently displayed to left of the entry, like this:)
And then, because I'm essentially lazy, I click the video, sit back, and let the entrepreneur tell me why I should look further. It requires no additional action, and fewer brain cells, on my part. Not only that, watching videos is actually fun, whereas reading another business plan...not so. Most importantly, however, a video is an entrepreneur's one chance to 'look me in the eye' and take a shot at conveying his or her essential self. Why is this important? Because as virtually every investor will tell you, in early stage deals our overwhelming preference is to bet the jockey, not the horse. That is, we'd much prefer to bet on someone we think has real entrepreneurial talent, even if the plan requires a bit of tweaking, than take a chance on even a superb plan in the hands of a mediocre entrepreneur. And letting us see you on video, looking right into the camera, is the first step in selling yourself...until we can see you in person.
"But..." I hear you object, "making a video and doing it right takes time and effort". To which my response is, "Doh!" How much are you trying to raise from angels or VCs? $200,000? $500,000? A million bucks? And how many years of your life are you prepared to commit to this venture? Three years? Five? Ten? Whatever time it takes to do the video right, doesn't it make sense to do so, if it will help your fundraising to even the teeniest, tiniest degree?
OK, now let's get to some practical suggestions. In an ideal world, you'd find someone (either a friend, or a professional) who knows how to do videos, and you'd carefully gather B-roll footage, product shots, customer testimonials, and more, and then you'd go into a studio and record yourself talking passionately into the camera in front of a 'green screen', and then you or an experienced video editor would cut the whole thing into a gem-like, five minute elevator pitch (but not too, TOO slick, because then we'll get a little suspicious).
The world, however, is rarely ideal, and if you're like me (and every other entrepreneur I've ever known) you want to get started right away, be finished in half an hour, and do it at your desk. Well, let's see what we can do to help.
First of all, built right into the OPEN-deals application, thanks to our friends at Viddler, is a nifty little widget that allows you to click one button, look into your computer's webcam, and record a live video, which
OPEN- deals will then upload and host for you at no charge:
No muss, no fuss, no cost...and absolutely no reason whatsoever that every single entrepreneur shouldn't have a video included with his or her OPEN-deals submission.
But if you want do a better, more professional job, there are quite a few tools available at very reasonable cost to give you a quick and painless way to create a polished pitch video. Putting aside all of the myriad high-end, production and editing packages, two companies in particular have really cool products that are just perfect for this purpose.
On the Mac side of the house, Vara Software has two great programs that you can try out for free, and download instantly. ScreenFlow lets you run your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation on your computer, while simultaneously recording an inset video of YOU, giving us the best of both worlds. Videocue 2 makes it really, really easy to write up your pitch, film it with your webcam while you read from a teleprompter, and seamlessly add in titles, overlays and images. Very cool...and they work.
Almost identical programs are available for Windows systems from Adobe, which last year acquired a really neat company named Serious Magic that had pioneered the whole 'pro-sumer video upload' field. Adobe Visual Communicator 3 does even more things than ScreenFlow, including letting you record and deliver your PowerPoint presentation, and Vlog It! is a virtual clone of Videocue. (To be fair, the Serious Magic/Adobe folks claim that it's the other way around, and that they were first. I'm not choosing sides, just point out two sets of cool programs.)
(By the way, the third Adobe/Serious Magic product in the list is Ovation, which is a VERY powerful program that takes your PowerPoint presentation, adds in a full teleprompter, timer, and other goodies. Definitely cool for doing pitch presentations.)
So there you have it. Now that you know the secrets, please be nice and pander to your friendly local angel investors by recording a video along with your OPEN-deals submission. It makes it easier and more fun for us, and gives you a much better chance of rising above all those entrepreneurs who weren't smart enough to read this blog entry!
– Application rated:
- An Investor has reviewed your application: 
- New Investment: $100,000 from John Doe, East Coast Angels
- Invitation: Name Of Event:
- Referred from Group1 to Group2:
- Investment Terms updated by John Doe:
