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.

Tim Cartwright from the Gulf Coast Venture Forum gave a great talk about how he uses Angelsoft to collaborate with his screening committee to decide which deals to share with his group. There was a big empahsis here on the logistics of organizing deals, and ease of use helping his screening committee get more involved

Then, Joan Wurzer from Rain Source Capital, a group of 23 regional funds across the Midwest that has over $20 MM invested in start-ups, spoke about using Angelsoft to share deals across all their funds, and also their 400 geographically dispersed angels. Attendees seemed to really take interest in the fact that Rain Source switched from their previous internal system to Angelsoft, and the fact that they did it in a very short amount of time - with little to no resistance from their membership.

Next, Bob Ward with the Oregon Angel Fund spoke in a category called “The Angelsoft Success Story”. His team with the Oregon Angel fund and their involvment with the Oregon Entrepreneur Network has lead to the successful deployment of Angelsoft across an entire region. Starting with the Angel Oregon competition, they are able to attract new investors and train them as part of the screening committee. This early positive experience tends to inspire repeat investors who then particpate in their Oregon Angel Fund, which syndicates with the Portland Angel Network and the Women’s Investor Network, as well as a variety of different VCs.

To wrap things up, Ryan Janssen, Angelsoft’s COO, spoke on the future of Angelsoft, focusing on Open Deals. Leading up to the event, many users had been requesting ways increase deal flow and meet and co-invest with other groups on Angelsoft. Open Deals delivers this and adds much more. We will cover this in a follow-on post, but the short outline of Open Deals looked like this:

Open Deals gives investors….
1) a way to find new deal flow online
2) a way to raise larger rounds of funding for the entrepreneurs they are investing in
3) a way to build trust and a reputation for their group through the Open Deals community.

All in all a very exciting event! Stay tuned for pictures and video!







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