Angel Insights Blog
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Celebrating ACA Member Successes in 2013
2013 was a great year for angel investors, including many ACA member angel groups. Several had successful exits, others made more investments than they ever have in a year, and new groups made investments for the first time.
It is important to celebrate these successes, which happened to members in all parts of North America. Here are some great examples:
IPOs:
- Marrone Bio Innovations Announces Closing of IPO (investors include Band of Angels – Menlo Park, CA, Sacramento Angels – Sacramento, CA, and Sierra Angels – Incline Village, NV)
- Aratana Therapeutics announces IPO (Investors include Mid-America Angels and Women’s Capital Connection – Kansas City, MO/KS)
Acquisitions:
- BlueTree Exits Portfolio Company (investors include BlueTree Allied Angels, Pittsburgh,PA)
- Newsy acquired by E.W. Scripps (investors include Arch Angels – St. Louis, MO)
- Horizon Resource Group acquired by Provista (investors include Nashville Capital Network – Nashville, TN)
- Advanced Liquid Logic acquired by Illumina (investors include Ariel Savannah Angel Partners – Savannah, GA)
- Power2Switch acquired by Choose Energy (investors include Hyde Park Angels – Chicago, IL)
- Consult A Doctor acquired by Teledoc (investors include New World Angels – Boca Raton, FL)
- Happy Baby acquired by Gerber (investors include Boise Angel Alliance – Boise, ID)
- Mashery acquired by Intel (investors include New York Angels – New York, NY)
- Ligocyte Pharmaceutical acquired by Takeda (investors include Frontier Angels – Polson, MT)
- Pacinian acquired by Synpatics (Investors include Frontier Angels – Polson, MT)
Most Active Years Ever and New Groups Starting Investments:
- Sand Hill Angels Announces Record Breaking Year (Sunnyvale, CA)
- The Gold Standard – Golden Seeds expands to 300 members, has invested $58M in 58 companies since 2005 (New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Dallas)
- Angel investment network provides $3.2M in 2013’s first nine months – Angel Investment Management Group (Alabama)
I embarked on this reflection of 2013 after receiving a call from TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Shieber, who asked about the level of angel investing in 2013 and cited data from CrunchBase in the article he wrote.
It’s interesting to see the different ways that organizations track angel investment. For example, while CrunchBase estimates $1.1 billion in angel investment in 2013, we know it’s much higher. The University of New Hampshire Center for Venture Research estimates angel investing at nearly $23 billion in 2012 and is showing a trend upward in 2013.
The HALO report also reports on angel investing, at the angel group level. But rather than sizing the entire angel market, it focuses on demographic information about where deals occur and trends involving the type of deals. It’s important to understand the nuances of all these numbers when sizing the angel market.
With all of these reports looking up, it’s time to celebrate the successes of 2013 for angel investors and our angel group members. Stay tuned for what happens in 2014. Part of me believes it will be a robust year, but another part of me is concerned that market confusion over SEC final and proposed rules related to general solicitation are holding back investment, but that is for another blog on another day.
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