Bob Teree here, VP of Product Development at Angelsoft. We hope you are enjoying your winter or summer (depending on your location - Angelsoft has investors in 45 countries!).
Since our last update in September, the Angelsoft team has been hard at work adding many new features and enhancements to the platform. Below is a detailed list of those features, and the benefits they provide. Additionally, we have formed three exciting partnerships with the Angel Capital Association and the National Association of Seed and Venture Fundsin the US, and the National Angel Capital Organization in Canada. Angelsoft has become the official Collaboration and Deal Flow Management platform for these three organizations, which together represent the large majority of professional early stage investment groups in North America. We are currently working on similar relationships with the other leading business angel and venture capital associations around the globe. Among the important aspects of these partnerships is access to Angelsoft’s basic investor tools as a benefit of membership in these associations, and close working relationships with these associations to help us define future product enhancements to the Angelsoft platform.
Below, I have outlined a summary of recent enhancements and new features we’ve added since September based on your feedback. Following that, I’d like to give you a preview of what’s to come. First the new features:
Angelsoft 4.0 - A New Simplified Design: As you have probably noticed, the entire Angelsoft SaaS platform has a new look and feel. At the highest level, our goals for this release were to greatly simplify the Angelsoft interface and improve its usability. Here are some examples of the most important enhancements:
Gold features = Administratorfeatures: We have used goldas the color to represent all Admin and Deal Admin features. If you see an action or menu item in gold, then you have Administrator privileges either across your entire Group, and/or for that one particular Deal.
My Account: Every user now has a simple My Account feature to manage their Primary (Log In) Email address as well as their Password. In addition, Admins or Regular Users can add additional Secondary Email addresses that will allow you to email from those addresses into the Angelsoft system. If Angelsoft does not recognize the “from” email address, it will bounce the email for security reasons.
Greenfeatures = New activity, importantfeatures, and features about you: When you see green, you are seeing information or a feature that you control or that is very important for the page. For example, Your Interest Level and Your Rating show their values in green. In addition greensunbursts appear to tell you there is new information available within that feature (such as new Documents or Messages). As soon as you click on the tab, the greensunburst will disappear.
“Deal List” Enhancements: There have been many enhancements to the Deal List, including:
Custom Labels: Labels (also known as Tags) do all the work that folders do, and also give you an extra bonus: you can add more than one of them to a deal. Labels in Angelsoft function much like the same feature in applications such as Google’s Gmail. Once you’ve created a label and applied it to one or more deals, you can view all the deals tagged with that label by simply clicking the label’s name in the list on the left side of the Deal List. The most common ways that investors use Labels are to label deals for a particular event (such as “Fall Open House” or “May 2010 Luncheon”) or for a particular industry (such as “Green Tech” or “Consumer Software”). Their uses are endless, flexible, and limited only by your imagination (and if you come up with an interesting one, please let us know, so we can share it with other groups!) You can also pick custom colors for your labels to add an additional way to manage them. A word on the difference between Stages and Labels. Stages are mutually exclusive — a deal can only be in one stage at a time; whereas Labels are not mutually exclusive — you can assign many labels to one deal.
The GoldGear: You will now see a goldgear icon (a drop-down arrow next to a circular gear icon) just to the right of Deal Names in the Deal List for all the actions that can be applied to one deal at a time. These include things like editing access to the deal, updating its status, adding a deal lead, and inviting the entrepreneur to join the deal (if it was initially created by an investor).
Source Column: We have added a new column in the Deal List titled “Source.” This lets you quickly see where the deal came from. Possibilities include: Internal (deals created by your Angels or VC partners/associates), Web (deals submitted by entrepreneurs through your website), Referral (deals referred to you by another Angelsoft-enabled group), and Co-Invest (deals that have been shared with you by another Angelsoft-enabled group so that you can collaborate within a shared Deal Room.).
Green check-markin the Entrepreneur Column: This shows you that an entrepreneur is on the “other-end” of a Deal Room and that you can collaborate with him or her. (Deals without such a check-mark are ones that were entered by an investor (e.g. Angel or VC Associate), and while you can track and collaborate among yourselves about them, the absence of the green check-mark means that the entrepreneur is neither updating the information nor participating in any communications about the deal.)
Improved “Ratings & Reviews” Feature: Each group can now customize its own rating categories, and even change the rating scale to anything between 1 and 10. In addition, all scores (old and new) will be normalized to 100%. This customizable feature lets you tune Angelsoft to match your own work-flow processes. This is a very powerful feature for Business Plan Competitions and screening committees.
Improved “Basic Reporting”:
Deal and Member reports have been greatly expanded. More reports are available and you can also now export the vast majority of information you enter into the system for data backup and other purposes like manual manipulation in Excel.
Improved “New Deal” Feature: Entering new deals yourself (instead of having them entered by the entrepreneur) is now faster than ever, and more useful with the inclusion of One Line Pitch, Deal Lead and Referred By fields now exposed in the New Deal dialogue. This will improve the work flow for both VCs and angels or anyone logging deals into their own account.
“Group Profile” Enhancements: The public Group Profile page for your investment group has been restyled to highlight the most important group information and statistics. Administrators now have better control over what precise information is displayed on their Group Profile. While the decision to include, or not include, specific details in your group’s public profile is completely yours to make, you should know that our statistics show that there is a direct correlation between the extent of a group’s transparency about its statistics, and both the quantity and quality of the deal flow it receives. Feel free to drop us a note if you would like to discuss our findings!
Ability to Edit “Investment Date:” Admins (and Deal Admins) can now edit the Investment Date for a deal that has been move to the Invested Stage. We strongly encourage you to manually enter in ALL the deals in which your group has previously invested (even those from the Dark Ages before Angelsoft and then check to be sure that all the “Investment Dates” are correct. This will help you enormously in generating accurate reports. In addition, data displayed in your Group Profile will also be more accurate.
Upcoming New Features and Enhancements (in general order of release):
New “My Dashboard” for all users, including Guests: The “My Dashboard” page, which is the first page that all regular users (i.e. non-Admins) arrive at by default when they first log in, will be simplified and revamped. In addition, this page will serve as the homepage for any Guest whom you add to a specific deal as well as any person applying to become a member of your Group (the Member Application feature is primarily for Angel Groups).
Premium Reporting: Angelsoft will soon be launching premium upgrade (additional license fees apply) options for our investors. The first premium offering will be a very sophisticated reporting system that allows users to create detailed custom reports, and also provides access to a number of comprehensive pre-designed reports. This feature was designed with the help of many of our venture fund and ’super angel group’ customers. If you are interested in learning more about these options and potentially upgrading to access them when they are released, simply complete a Support/Feedback Ticket. Please note that all Admins within your group must upgrade in unison and at the same time and that the upgrade fee is purely driven by the number of Admin users in your group.
Deal Importing: As an increasing number of the world’s larger angel/investor groups are adopting Angelsoft, we have been working with them on a case-by-case basis to import all of their past deal activity from their legacy spreadsheets, databases and web sites. We are in the process of developing standardized importing tools, and over the next few months we are going to be able to bring that capability to ALL of our investment groups! If your group has any structured information on past deals in which you’ve invested (even large numbers of applications that you did NOT fund) we invite you to load those in to your Angelsoft account. This will give you a comprehensive picture of your group’s activity, past, present and future, and will allow you to use our extensive reporting features to analyze and report on your group’s activities. To take advantage of this importing service, simply complete a Support/Feedback Ticket and we’ll handle all the technical aspects for you, importing as many deals as you’d like!
Multi-Round deal management through Linked Deals: One of the most frequent requests we’ve received is for the ability to better manage multiple funding rounds for a single company. We’re pleased to let you know that a forthcoming release will support the ability to link deals together, so that multiple rounds can be associated with one venture. This will allow groups to support the integrity of each round namely, maintain independent access lists, and independent stages (so that, for example, Round A might be in the Invested Stage, while Round B might be in the In-Progress Stage.) The “Link Deal” feature will allow you to link deals in the order you want and will allow you to link both new and existing deals.
Event Enhancements: Many enhancements to our event management system will be released in the coming months, including improvements for RSVPs made through Angelsoft, to deal with the non-standard way that certain email clients (e.g. Gmail) handle invitation responses.
Contact Management Enhancements: We plan to greatly improve contact management (similar to CRM systems like Salesforce.com) to help you better manage ALL of your contacts, including Members/Users, Guests, Entrepreneurs and the Sub-Groups to which they belong. For example, you will be able to email all Entrepreneurs that you have invested in or that have applied to you.
We continue to welcome your feedback, and encourage you to reply to this email with any feedback, thoughts or requests you might have…or simply complete a Support/Feedback Ticket at any time to tell us what’s on your mind!
You can create a deal in Angelsoft by sending or forwarding an email to your drop-box email (newsubmissions@YourGroupName.angelgroups.net ).
Remember these simple rules to maximize your use of the drop-box email:
The subject of the message will be the Deal Name.
The files attached to the email (up to 10MB) will go in Documents.
The body of the message will be posted under Messages.
This will speed things up, and allow you to start tracking ALL your deals in Angelsoft.
For a more advanced option, you can also add ::referral source to the subject line, to indicate the person or organization who referred the entrepreneur to you. For instance, if a company named ABC General was introduced to you by Sam Smith, then the subject line should be: ABC General::Sam Smith.
In this two-week, short release we focused on the Deal List, adding some long-requested functionality:
Add/Remove Deal List Columns
Group administrators can now add or remove data columns from their group’s Deal List under Group Preferences. New columns include: City & State, Referrer, Deal Leads, Funds Seeking, Valuation, Last Moved Date, Last Activity Date, and Entrepreneur’s name.
All columns are sortable, to give you better control over your list display.
Assign Deal Leads
When the Deal Leads column is turned on, you can see each Deal’s leads and add new ones right from the list. You can also sort by deal leads to see deals by their lead.
Invite Entrepreneur
If the Entrepreneur column is turned on, you can see which deals have entrepreneurs invited to them, and which don’t. You can invite the entrepreneurs to fill out the company profile right from the deal list.
Invited entrepreneurs still cannot see investor documents, ratings, or investor-only discussions.
Shared Deals
The new Shared Deals folders on the Deal List help you keep track of all the deals you have referred out or co-invested out.
Shared deals are sorted into folders based on the groups they were shared with.
Hope you enjoy the new Deal List! Feedback is welcome below.
The New Entrepreneur Newsfeed gives you even more visibility into the funding process, and how your application is being judged and evaluated.
Here is a guide to better understand what each news item means:
- Investor comment on Community:
An investor has posted a comment on your Community deal wall and chose to share it with you. This comment is available to all investors on the Angelsoft Investor Community. You may reply to this comment just once, and it will be posted right below the investors comments for all investors to see.
- An Investor gave your application a Thumbs Up:
Investors on the community can moderate deals Up or Down. You can see your total ratings from investors, including your current relative position among community deals.
- An Investor gave your application a Thumbs Down:
An investor has rejected your deal by giving it a thumbs down. This will affect your relative position in the community negatively, however positive ratings can cancel the negative ones out. Again, you can see how it affects your relative position right on your Investor Community box on the top left.
- An Investor has viewed your Open Deals 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: Screening Event 2008:
An investment group has invited you to an event. Clicking on the event name will link you to the details
- Referred from Acme Angels to East Coast Angels:
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.
- East Coast Angels invited Acme Angels to collaborate:
To finish out a round of financing, Angel Groups often need to collaborate on a deal, or co-invest. When this happens, Group B is invited into Group A’s deal room. In this case, you will not see a new application on your My Applications tab
- A member of East Coast Angels has referred your application to his group:
Congratulations! An investor has referred your deal from the Investor Community to his investment group for further review.
- An investor has viewed your [group name] application:An investor from the designated group has clicked on your application and read it over.
- Application posted to the Investor Community by John Doe: The Investor Community is a feature 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.
In addition to all of the speed and stability enhancements released with version 3.1 of Angelsoft, we have given investment groups increased control over the look and feel of the entrepreneur application.
Investment group logo and name are now much more prominently displayed at the top of the application.
Investment groups may now select one of four color schemes, as well as include an introductory paragraph with a group profile, investment criteria, and instructions for the entrepreneur so that you can ensure potential entrepreneurs will understand exactly how best to apply to your group.
Watch the video below to see exactly how to customize your group’s application:
Collaborate with the entrepreneur to track round progress, terms, and investments as they come in. The new Investment tab will only show for administrators and investors, and only after the entrepreneur has reviewed Investment information.
Collaborate on Terms
Both the Entrepreneur on the one hand, and Deal Leads and Group Administrators on the other, can update the Investment Terms, including Valuation, Stock vs. convertible debt, and more.
Manage Investment Amounts Both investors and entrepreneurs now have the tools to update investment amounts. Entrepreneurs can also add Other Investors, which means that everyone can get a round total even for investors outside of Angelsoft.
Investor-Only Documents The investment process requires multiple documents, such as term sheets, quarterly updates, etc. With Investor Documents, the entrepreneur can upload documents that will only be visible to administrators and to members who have their interest level set to Funds Committed or Funds Transferred.
Investments Pie Chart See the share that your group holds in this round.
Trust is everything in the world of angel investing. Better Member Profiles, visible to other group members, are one way to achieve it. The profiles now include:
Investor Bio
Members can describe themselves in their own words.
Contacts & Secondary Contacts
Never lose touch with your members. Members may use either their primary or secondary email in message forums.
LinkedIn Profile
Encourage members to post their LinkedIn profile on Angelsoft!
Investment Portfolio
Previous investments will show on each member’s profile.
Investment Interests
Investors can select industries of interest.
Experience & Expertise
Investors can select industries and areas of expertise.
Participation Preferences
Investors can select group participation preferences, including doing Due Diligence, and Leading Deals
Admin-Only Notes
Administrators can add notes to any member profile, which will only be visible to other administrators of that group.
We try to have every release bring something special and useful to our users - but in our view this last release has been extra special.
For a complete list of updates click here. Below are some highlights:
OPEN DEALS
Deal sharing and syndication between groups has long been a major benefit of working together on Angelsoft, but what if you’re not sure who might be interested in co-investing a specific deal? Introducing Open Deals, where Group Managers can post deal notices that any of the over 300 angel groups who use Angelsoft can respond to.
Post a Deal Notice to Open Deals - Got an interesting deal, but not enough interested investors in your group? Post a notice to the Open Deals space, where over 300 angel groups worldwide can see it. The notice will include the application and a note from you, but none of the attached documents or entrepreneur’s contact information. Interested group administrators will be able to contact you directly from the deal page.
Browse & Review Deals - Open Deals also has a number of deals submitted directly by Entrepreneurs. Sort by distance, industry, average ratings, or number of views. Watch videos and read business summaries. Rate and review a deal to share your view with the Angel community.
Refer a Deal to Your Group - When you see an Open Deal that seems interesting, you can refer it to your group with one click! The deal will be added to a special sub-folder of your New Submissions.
Request to Co-Invest - Found a great deal shared by another group on Open Deals? Write a quick note to the group administrator who posted it, and let them know you are interested! In case there’s a good fit, they will be able to share the deal with your group with one click!
Continue as Usual - Open Deals is an open directory completely separate from your group that you can use to gather additional investment for a deal or augment your dealflow during a quiet month. None of your deals will EVER be displayed there unless YOU submit them.
ENHANCED DEAL SYNDICATION
Sharing deals with groups and individuals has been simplified in this release. We added:
Sharing Options Page - Angelsoft offers a variety of ways to share deals with others: referrals, co-investments, adding guests, and Open Deals. On the new Sharing page, we clearly explain each option.
Sharing Drop-down Menu - We have collected all sharing options under a single Share drow-down menu, available on the Deal List and the Deal Dashboard. Now you can share quickly, share easily, and share often!
Refer/Co-Invest by State - Referring and Co-Investing now lets you look at the group list according to country and state. Discover groups in your vicinity, and share your deal information with them directly!
Co-Investment Improvements - Co-Invested deals from another group will now show your group’s logo, and not the logo of the originating group.
DECLINED DEAL EMAILS
We believe that entrepreneurs deserve to get an email when their application has been declined. And you deserve an easy tool to send them with:
Create a Declined Note Template - Create a Declined Note template directly from Group Preferences, and use it as a basis for every declined notice.
Send Individual Declined Emails - When moving a single deal to the Inactive folder, you will be given a chance to write a personalized note to the entrepreneur, based on your template.
Send Bulk Declined Emails - When moving multiple deals to the Inactive folder, you will be given a chance to write a generic declined note based on your template and send it to all the right entrepreneurs.
FULL SPEED AHEAD!
As always, we strive to make Angelsoft faster, more reliable, and more enjoyable for our users. This time we worked on cleaning some old code, to improve speed and responsiveness.
The Deal Dashboard - The Deal Dashboard now loads faster than ever!
Deal Messages and Documents - We have optimized Deal Messages and Deal Documents to allow for faster loading.
As always, we look forward to your feedback, and hope that you will benefit from these new features! Please visit our blog and sound off, if you’d like to share your comments with others.
and then check to be sure that all the “Investment Dates” are correct. This will help you enormously in generating accurate reports. In addition, data displayed in your Group Profile will also be more accurate.
- An Investor has viewed your Open Deals application: 
- New Investment: $100,000 from John Doe, East Coast Angels
- Invitation: 
- Referred from Acme Angels to East Coast Angels:
- An investor has viewed your [group name] application:
