Irina: How do you swap deals with other angel groups? By e-mail?
Corey: That was how it was done years ago, and it’s still done that way, sometimes but there’s a Web platform called AngelSoft, and that makes it really easy. There are features right inside AngelSoft, so we can just send deals right through the AngelSoft system to any group that uses it. That makes it easy.
Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold have posted a series of interview segments with Corey Silva of River Valley Investors. Corey answers a wide range of questions from how he got his start to the ins-and-outs of how RVI operates and invests.
While we appreciate Corey’s kind words about Angelsoft in the fourth segment, the 13-part series gives an excellent overview of the angel investment process.
Entrepreneurs will find it to be a helpful orientation to what goes on behind the curtain. Investors will find an interesting story of Corey’s path from Rock n’ Roll musician to manager of the River Valley Investors angel group along with a great reference point for managing an angel investor group.
For those new to early stage venture investment, syndication is when multiple investor groups (VCs or angels) contribute funds to a cumulatively larger investment sum in a single company. Syndication is an opportunity to spread risk, combine resources, and collaborate with strategic partners in other regions.
Venture Hype has published the first post of a 2-part interview with Paul G. Silva regarding “Angel Group Syndication Process Design.”
Silva emphasized the importance of unified collaboration. The groups used Angelsoft to coordinate their combined due diligence efforts:
Unite ALL interested investors from all groups into 1 due diligence team, all sharing 1 set of tools. In our case we all used AngelSoft’s Co-invest feature to make sure everyone was on the same mailing lists and looking at the same documentation.
Steve Mock, the founder and CEO of GiftVenture, was recently interviewed on Frank Peters’s podcast. Giftventure is a new offering to make giving a gift to a child much more interesting. Steve applied to Vegas Valley Angels in Las Vegas through Angelsoft - since GiftVenture is located in Nevada. Frank Peters of Tech Coast Angels went to Las Vegas, saw this deal and brought it back to TCA in Los Angeles. The TCA members loved this deal so much, one said, “I want the best deals, I don’t care where they are from.”
This is a deal that would have otherwise been overlooked by TCA because the company is not located in Southern California - yet it turned out to be a perfect deal for their membership.
Angelsoft makes co-investing with other early-stage investment groups easy, wherever they may be located. VC’s, Angel Groups, and other groups across the globe are all using the power of this shared back end system to accelerate and find the best deals — period — and make sure that those deals are getting funded.
Frank Peters put it best: “I gained an insight into just what collaborating on deals via Angelsoft could mean to the future of angel investing.” The thinking now is as long as a trusted, local group has some skin in the game, groups from outside the region are more and more willing to participate. For the most part, an outside group will need a local group to run due diligence anyway. At Angelsoft, we are delighted that more groups are using our platform to connect and invest across a much wider region than ever before.
Mark LaRosa, Ryan Pipkin, and Matt Rosen represented Angelsoft at the ACA Southeast Angels Conference last week in Greensboro, NC. The event was organized and hosted by Troy Knauss and the Piedmont Angel Network. There were over 60 investors representing 25 groups in attendance.
Attendees heard presentations from 11 companies that were selected by a committee of regional GM’s prior to the conference. In addition, Ryan gave a presentation on using Angelsoft to facilitate deal syndication.
Angelsoft sponsored a dinner on Thursday that was just delicious, the weather was perfect, and UNC made The Final Four…
The only thing anyone was left asking was…when could we do it again?
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.
In a move to start covering more Angel Activities around the world, we launch “Angels Abroad” a series highlight international Angels and their investment news. Here a Norwich based startup raises £515,000 from a syndicate comprised of London Seed Capital, London Business Angels, Lond Business Angel’s EIS Tracker fund, and GEIF Ventures.
