This is an overview of all the tools we provide for configuring your the entrepreneur funding request application for your specific group. You may want to do this when you first setup Angelsoft, or over time as you learn more about how entrepreneurs are answering specific questions
2) Adding Deals:
Here we’ll cover how to get your deals into the Angelsoft platform. Entrepreneurs can submit their fulll profiles to you directly, but you may want to back load some deals, or track your own information.
3) Setting Permissions/Deal Access:
An introduction to the last of the top level tabs, the Community. Definitely the place to start if you’re looking to find deals or to find new co-investors from the Angelsoft investor community at large.
This is an overview of all the tools on the “My Groups” tab. It covers the Deal list, Group Document Vault, Group Messages, Events, and Member tabs.
2) Deal Tools:
A basic overview of the tools we provide on the deal level. Each deal has a dashboard, documents vault, message forum, and a deal history tab. This video will give you a quick tour.
3) Investor Community:
An introduction to the last of the top level tabs, the Community. Definitely the place to start if you’re looking to find deals or to find new co-investors from the Angelsoft investor community at large.
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.
After watching the video of my “How to Pitch a VC” presentation at the TED conference, Garr Reynolds, who writes PresentationZen (the name of both the most influential presentation blog on the web, and also the best book ever written on presentation design) asked if I would mind if he created a summary slide show of my top tips that he could use with his students. Mind? I was delighted! So here’s the really, really short crib note version of my pitch training sessions. The first list are the personal qualities in YOU that an investor looks for; the next set are the inside tips that will make your presentation come across as uber-professional. Good luck with your pitch!
In the early days of New York Angels, we noticed what appeared to be an anomaly in our operations. We had quickly established a good incoming flow of deals, and had followed that up with an effective screening process, but we found that we were actually funding a much smaller percentage of the presenting companies than we had expected. What was particularly puzzling was that we KNEW these were likely fundable companies, because we had spent over half an hour with them around a table during the screening session, and only picked the very best ones (typically the top 10%) to present to our whole group. But after hearing the fifteen minute pitches during our monthly meeting, our full membership just didn’t get excited enough to put their money to work. A puzzlement. We eventually figured out the problem: the companies were great, but the pitches were awful!
That was when we instituted mandatory pitch coaching for every single company that was selected to present to our membership. The result? Our investment rate more than DOUBLED, and we have funded over $35 million into more than 50 companies during the past six years. In that time, I have handled most of the coaching duties on behalf of the group, and have gotten pretty good at helping entrepreneurs refine their Powerpoint presentations to meet the need of their target audience: early stage investors. Word began to spread about these sessions, and soon BusinessWeek came by to do a story about them, giving me the moniker of The Pitch Coach. The next thing I knew, there seemed to be even more demand for presentation training than there was for my investment dollars!
These days, I spend quite a bit of my time teaching entrepreneurs how to clearly and persuasively get their message across. Most of this happens for New York Angels, at business schools like Yale, Columbia or NYU, or for institutions like the National Science Foundation. However a couple of years ago Chris Anderson, the Curator of the renowned TED conference (and a fellow New York Angel member) asked if I would do a session during the “TED University” event before the main conference. I agreed, but wondered how I would be able to compress what is usually an hour long presentation into the allotted 12 minutes. The answer? Talk faster! [grin] So, with the compliments of TED.com, here is The Pitch Coach, in the super-express-version of “How to Pitch an Angel (or VC)”. I hope you find it useful! (The ‘expand’ button in the corner will bring up a full-screen version.)
The Investor Community provides you with a place to view and rate & review deals. Whether feedback is positive or negative and whether the deal is local or all the way across the country, your feedback is valuable! As more and more member provide negative feedback, other investors won’t waste their time looking at the less interesting deals, and the good deals will rise to the top.
Also, as you build a reputation as a great deal reviewer, other Angel groups will begin to know who you are and what types of deals you like. The Investor Community becomes your private community to establish your expertise , reputation, and trust as an investor.
1) Start with the Deal Dashboard:
If you do not know how to find the Deal Dashboard for a deal in the Investor Community, please view the Basic Guide to the Investor Community tutorial.
2) Scroll to bottom to find Ratings & Review section:
3) Click “Rate & Review this deal”:
4) Enter in your ratings for each category:
5) Type up a review with all your opnions on this deal:
Here is where you can establish your credentials. The more valuable your feedback, the more other investment groups will appreciate your work. The more thoughtful your reviews, the more you will establish your area of expertise in the eyes of the early stage investment community.
The Investor Community can be used as a source of extra deal flow for your investment group. As you navigate from deal to deal putting in Ratings & Reviews, if you find a deal that might interest your investment group, you can simply refer it back to your group. With the click of a button, you can send a copy of this deal to the new submissions folder of your group on Angelsoft, where it is then ready to go through your group’s investment process.
1) Find the Deal Dashboard:
If you do not know how to find the Deal Dashboard for a deal in the Investor Community, please view the Basic Guide to the Investor Community tutorial.
One of the toughest steps in the investment process is getting back to the entrepreneur to let them know that your group is not going to proceed with their funding request. It can be an emotionally charged situation, and because there are so many more deals out there than capital to fund them, it has to be a regular part of your investment group’s activity.
If we look at the positive side of turning down a funding request, we see that many groups use this as an opportunity to provide feedback to the entrepreneurs. Its a critical part of the process where the investors are able to give something valuable back to the entrepreneur, and an opportunity to set them on the path to finding funding from another source or possibly from that group at a later date.
To help with this process we’ve added the ability to send a “declined email” to the entrepreneur.
Take a look at the tutorial below and let us know what you think!
1) Select the deal or deals you would like to decline
Check the box next to the name of the deal, or check the boxes next to the name of all the deals you would like to decline. This feature works in bulk.
So, you have a deal with some serious interest from your group, but not enough to do the full round. This is a great opportunity for you to leverage the Angelsoft network, and get connected to other investment groups nearby. With a couple simple steps, you can post your deal to Open Deals, making a preview available to other Angelsoft users, so they can contact you to discuss the potential of co-investing.
Nothing more than a preview will be shared, and once you are contacted you can still decide how you would like to proceed with this group. Its a very fast and efficient way to find more capital, and a huge value you can offer the entrepreneurs applying to your group.
Go to My Groups >> Admin >> Preferences >> New Submissions.
By default you have a row for Group Admins, and a row for Group Members. Also you will se a row for any of the subgroups you may have already created in the system. (for instructions on creating and managing Subgroups please Click Here).
In the first column, you choose which subgroups should have access to all New Submissions. In the second column you choose which subgroups should receive the New Submission Notifications.
