Angel Investing By: Ham Lord, Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group and Co-Founder of Seraf-investor.com This post originally appeared on Seraf-investor.com The handyman’s toolbox… whether you use it for small home improvement projects or just minor repairs, no home is complete without a few essential tools. At Seraf, we feel the same way when it comes to investing in early stage companies. You need a good set of tools to do the job right. Sometimes the task at hand is overseeing due diligence on a potential investment. Other times, you need to advise a CEO on how to run a great board meeting. Or maybe you need some guidance on where to look for key data in the investment documents you receive from company counsel. Whatever the task is, we want you to have the right tools to get the job done, so we’ve collected a great set of early stage company checklists and templates for everyone to use as a reference. Bookmark it, link to it, share it and keep your eye on it - we’ll add additional handy tools every so often. Tags: Resources  By: Swati Chaturvedi, Medium/ @propel(x) This blog initially appeared on Dissected by propel(x) blog on Medium. It shows how one angel investor thinks about valuations. Other angels may have different thoughts or calculations, but it is a resource for entrepreneurs to learn about the equity raising process. Putting a value on your visionary idea — you know, the one that’s going to change the world — can be tricky. To you as a founder, your idea is priceless. To investors…not so much. In reality, it’s investors’ job to think about it differently and press down on valuation. Understanding their perspective with regard to valuation will help your fundraising efforts go smoothly and net you the investments you’re after. So, how can startups bridge the gap between the investors’ thought process and theirs? A good place to start is by understanding how angels and VCs think about valuation and their portfolio as a whole. Then, startups should consider some basic data and work backwards to arrive at an implied valuation. Tags:  By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of state securities regulators with leaders of different parts of our securities markets in the US and Canada to compare notes. Not only do I admire the regulators for holding meetings such as this, but I learned a great deal about some of our newest types of securities – equity crowdfunding for everyone and Regulation A (Reg A+ for short). By agreement of all attendees, I can’t share some specifics of who said what, but let me share some of my general takeaways from the NASAA Capital Formation Roundtable about equity crowdfunding:
Tags: Crowdfunding  By: Matt Dunbar, co-founder of the South Carolina Angel Network and managing director of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network. This post originally appeared in Upstate Business Journal. On Father’s Day weekend, I indulged a bit in watching the last round of the U.S. Open golf tournament and the last game of the NBA Finals. My lovely wife, who doesn’t exactly share my interest in sports (other than college football), opined that she found the sports to be boring — except right at the end when you find out who’s going to win. Tags: Accredited Investors Matt Dunbar contributed to this article. He is the co-founder of the South Carolina Angel Network and managing director of the Upstate Carolina Angel Network. This post originally appeared in Upstate Business Journal. Risky business Investing in startups is not for the faint of heart. These businesses are just beginning to develop, and their expenses typically exceed their revenue. In fact, most of them will fail. But you could find yourself sitting on a goldmine. Case in point: Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He invested about $100,000 in Google just months after founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created the tech giant in their garage. Bechtolsheim is now worth about $3 billion. That could be you. Tags: Accredited Investors By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director Ever wonder how your investment activity and background compares to other angels in the US? Take The American Angel survey to put in your information and get early access to detailed reports to learn more. ACA is partnering with Wharton Entrepreneurship to develop the first ever large dataset of US angel investors to understand who angels are demographically, how they became angel investors, how angels make decisions, and what level and type of investment activity they have. The project should benefit angels as an asset class as it brings more visibility to angels, supports a stronger early-stage investing environment, and lead to better public policies to support angel investing and innovative startups. It just might refute a lot of assumptions about angel investors that are incorrect. While I was doing some research about some of our ACA Summit speakers, I found that several have penned some really interesting pieces. Angels and entrepreneurs can learn a lot about investing trends and key trends and issues in early stage investing. Here is an incomplete list of articles to check out:  By A.J. Watson of Fundify, LLC in Austin, TX. This article originally appeared on Medium.com Summary: The majority of angel investments are made by investors with no prior industry experience. This is a problem since one of the best indicators of investment success is the investor’s past experience. If you are an angel investor, you should seek to invest in industries where you have experience OR invest alongside investors with prior experience. I believe so strongly in this fact that I’m helping build Fundify.com, a community of industry experts, to help. Tags: By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director Are you an accredited angel investor? We need ten minutes of your time to make a big difference for startup investing. Please take this confidential survey to help us understand who angel investors are, how they became angels, and what factors influence their investing activity. Today ACA and Wharton Entrepreneurship announced a partnership to complete the first-ever comprehensive demographic study of angel investors across the U.S. We believe this study will help identify characteristics of angel investors that have never before been understood. It is critical for entrepreneurs, economic development entities, private market makers, regulators and legislators to understand who angel investors are, in order to drive effective policies to ensure a robust angel investing marketplace and for startups to better access equity capital.  A few weeks ago I provided a comparison of different debt options for startups. This generated a conversation about debt options for angels and angel groups and whether there were cost-effective ways to tap extra liquidity when needed. There certainly are a broad range of debt offerings emerging as non-bank financial service providers all look for substantial yields. One interesting method is the asset backed financing offered by Merrill Lynch/ BOA and Morgan Stanley, among others. Broker/dealers have always had margin accounts where investors could borrow funds to buy stocks or bonds. Using one’s existing exchange listed shares as collateral for startup financing is new, however. (This refers to investors’ stocks, not those of the entrepreneurs.) Tags: Exits |
