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.
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.
David’s “Insiders Guide to Angel Investing” provided entrepreneurs with valuable information on what they can do to secure angel funding and also gave an early look at the forthcoming entrepreneurs hub on Angelsoft!
Liddy Karter, board member of the ACA, Executive Director of The Angel Investor Forum in Hartford, Connecticut, and member of Golden Seeds, was featured on Frank Peters’ podcast this week. She had a lot of very positive comments about Angelsoft, as well as angel investing in general. The Frank Peters’ show is always very educational listening, but this week in particular, had a lot of very interesting discussion.
Listen here or go to the posting on Frank’s site here. We have also transcribed the text of the Angelsoft comments below:
Liddy Karter: We have just adopted something that I think you are looking at, Frank, we have just adopted Angelsoft. Frank Peters: That’s right, yeah Liddy: And, in fact, one of the main reasons we adopted it, is I was under the impression that you guys [Tech Coast Angels] were adopting it or looking at it in any case. FP: Yeah, we are looking at it very seriously. In fact, I’ve got an implementation plan on my desk. I’m just working out the details of how we cut over. Liddy: We had developed an in-house system on the Microsoft SharePoint platform. It was very similar to Angelsoft. Maybe not quite as slick, but very similar. The big thing we weren’t doing easily was sharing our information with other Angel groups. FP: That is the big advantage isn’t it… syndication. Liddy: It’s THE big advantage. Syndication. We’re getting referrals from other angel groups and its all right there. Our entrepreneurs are happy because they feel that investing the time to put their data in is worthwhile because it’s going to get shared beyond our group [Hartford's Angel Investor Forum] which has approximately 70 members full-time and another 100 or so that are kind-of circling around the periphery so maybe they contact 170 angels by talking to us, but by going into Angelsoft, when we are doing a deal we know we can only put in a couple of hundred thousand and they are looking for a million, we immediately syndicate it to other groups that we’re comfortable with, and its seamless for the entrepreneur to do that. Liddy: I recommend it. FP: So, you recommend Angelsoft. What’s been the surprise after you get started with Angelsoft. Any surprises? Liddy: Well, there is one. We had been told by a couple of other angel groups, that their members weren’t able or willing to use Angelsoft and so it was really for the group leaders. But that has NOT been our experience. Our members are all over this thing! In fact, I looked yesterday. You can tell the last time a person has logged on. Our members are logging on every couple of days to just check out new deals, rate them, rank them. It’s really surprising. FP: So, no user ambivalence. Adoption has met your expectations, it sounds like? Liddy: It actually exceeded them. And it has helped our process because it’s much easier now for me to send out notices and to track who’s responded and that sort of thing. I was using a system called Constant Contact for that, for newsletters and things and now I just use Angelsoft. So it’s really been a great help just consolidating our process and communication flow. FP: Well great, Liddy, your comments will help me. … I’ll get your comments around to the leadership here at Tech Coast Angels. We’re keen to do it too. Liddy: Well, it will help your entrepreneurs too. It will. FP: We pass almost every deal we do to the Pasadena Angels. Right now…it doesn’t sound like much…but it IS. An entrepreneur, who is already really busy, has to make an application to the two places. Eliminating one of those would be a great advantage for them. Liddy. I wish, and I believe, that our community can start getting a lot closer. For instance, we just looked at a deal … which was interesting, but it was in San Diego. … I was interested, but at the end of the day, I just wanted to pass them off to you guys, and [I gave them a name and told them to go talk to him]. If you had been on Angelsoft, I would have just clicked and said “OK, Check this out.” FP: We could have been looking at it the same day. Liddy: Exactly. FP: Instead, we’ve got some sort of inertia curve with the entrepreneur probably.. We have to get his attention, and entice him to apply. Liddy: What I find interesting about the evolution of the Angel Community, is that the regional dominance of a couple of angel groups, maybe not in Boston or Silicon Valley, but certainly where we are [Hartford, Connecticut] which is not as densly populated with venture capitalists … but when you get down to our size deals, it’s pretty thin – and I think that’s probably the case in 90% of the country. So, when you’ve got an active angel group that is part of the Angel Capital Association, they become almost the gate keeper for these entrepreneurs, meaning that if that group passes, it’s a problem for that company if they need to get financing from another group. So, when I saw [the deal referred above], my first question was, “Have you talked to the Tech Coast Angels?” Go talk to them first and maybe we will look at it later. We all have to recognize that role. That we are vetting deals potentially all over the country – and I think we have always thought of our role as working with our particular members, but I think that’s going to change. The whole syndication process will be much more active because of Angelsoft and a shared platform.
Google Apps went down this weekend and some of their services suffered, such as enterprise email. Angelsoft uses Google’s Enterprise Email service, so if you sent us an email over the weekend, you may have received a “permanent failure” message. We apologize if you encountered this error, and please resend any emails you may have tried to send us over the weekend. Thanks!
The newly formed Midland, Michigan-based BlueWater Angels has made quite an entrance on to the angel investment stage. Started in October 2007, the group has already heard presentations from two companies and has announced plans to invest more than $1 million in promising mid-Michigan companies on an annual basis. They will work closely with the MidMichigan Innovation Center, a private, non-profit organization supporting entrepreneurs and start-up companies with resources, services, flexible facilities and entrepreneur training.
“MMIC got involved in establishing an angel investment network because capital was always the top issue facing our tenant companies,” said Brent Case, executive director of MMIC. “Having the BlueWater Angels in our backyard makes helping current tenant companies and attracting new companies to the region more feasible. Now mid-Michigan companies do not have to go out of state or to other regions in Michigan to secure capital.”
BlueWater Angels is using Angelsoft to accept business plans and manage the group’s activities. Interested companies can apply to the group here.
They have quickly become one of the more active groups on the system and we are excited to have them aboard!
