I recently attended the first ever ACA Northwest conference held in Bellevue, WA. Here’s the agenda:
ACA Pacific Northwest Regional Meeting Agenda 2007
About 40 angels and group managers who represent about 20 groups in the U.S. and Canada were there. The two themes of conversation that dominated: Metrics and Co-investment.

We had a great talk from Robert Wiltbank about the research he’s doing with the ACEF. His angel-specific data was based on a fairly small set of survey results, but one of the most interesting findings was that a huge percentage of exits in the $15-40 million range receive less than $1 million in funding. It was clear from speaking with Rob and analyzing the data, that the ACEF REALLY needs better data to work with (more on this later).

The second subject was almost surreal. Ed Alfke, who was strongly advocating that angel groups share deal flow and co-invest on the best deals, led the discussion. His feeling being that it helps angel groups participate in the best deals, which often require more money than a single group can raise alone. I was surprised to find that all the angel groups present not only agreed, but were actually looking for a way to make this happen.

As a sponsor of the event, I was on the line to give a lunch speech on Angelsoft 2.0. Amazingly, I was going spend my time talking about the new co-investment feature as well as our positioning as a data provider to the industry!

I’m not going to ramble on about our metrics based business model (which will be a GOD-SEND to the industry), or how cool the co-investment feature is (it does make sending deals around DROP-DEAD simple), but let me say that this was the best set-up for a talk I’ve ever had.

Thanks to Marriane Hudson and Elaine Kong for organizing the event, held at The Washington Technology Center and to the participants who let down their guard in an effort to make this industry even better through their cooperation—really outstanding.

Ryan Janssen :: Apr.25.2007
Events