Use ACA to Fuel Successful Angel Investments
Smart, professional and successful angel investors know that it takes a team to ensure that investments are strategic and portfolio companies have the best opportunity for successful exits. With more than 13,000+ active angel investors including 240 angel groups and platforms, and deep partnerships with angel investing research organizations, Angel Capital Association can help you build and execute a winning investment strategy.
Seven Smart Ways to Leverage Your ACA Membership
1. Learn from other experienced angel investors while you network and exchange ideas at the ACA Summit and ACA Angel Insights Exchange and regional meetings. Members receive discounts.
2. Put your ACA angel connections to use with the ACA members only directory, then expand deal flow, syndicate deals or invest in specific industries with ACA sector groups. Free to ACA members.
3. Stay on top of best practices and trends through bi-monthly ACA webinars, weekly eNews, Blog posts and trending conversations on the ACA LinkedIn Group and Twitter feeds. Free to ACA members.
4. Use the ACA Knowledge Center and Members Only Event Library to get investment answers including reports and topical presentations presented by members-for members, in addition to angel investing industry data and analysis. Free to members.
5. Take advantage of ACA-only discounts through ACA service partners and sponsors including deeply discounted access to workflow platforms and access to webinar and industry data tools for groups and portfolio companies, and many others (see partner handout and ACA Member Store for current offers).
6. Benefit from ACA representation in the halls of Congress and regulatory agencies on issues that affect American angel investing. In addition receive early information and actionable tools to make it easy to share your views with legislators and regulators.
7. Build your angel investing team and toolkit by using ACA resources to meet, learn from and connect to experienced and active angels that are dealing with the same issues, questions, concerns, challenges as you.
The most important added bonus—Remember, your membership in an ACA group means your ACA membership is always free—no charge to you!
Angel to Angel Tips
ACA Webinar Series as Angel Education Tips
Three Unique Ways Members Integrate ACA Webinar Topics into Angel Group Meetings
Aviva Ajmera, Women’s Capital Connection
I used to take the ACA webinar emails for granted—just another email in my inbox— but what I found is they could help us learn. As Vice Chair of the Executive Committee one of my responsibilities is group education. Although every member in our group is a subject matter expert in something, we aren’t all experts in every aspect of angel investing. We have members that are veteran investors and we have investors new to angel investing, ACA Webinars have been a great addition to our group development.
Our Approach: Use 15 minutes at the start of monthly group meetings for discussion of a recent ACA webinar topic.
- Process:
- One month prior to group meeting: Select an upcoming webinar topic to attend based on feedback from members about their interests
- During webinar: Take notes to create a handout for the upcoming member meeting; handout includes discussion points, a summary of key takeaways, and resource links. Also see who else from our group is on the webinar and touch base with them afterwards to collaborate on key learning.
- During group meeting: Provide webinar handout to members and facilitates a discussion to uncover what members agree or disagree with, and include in group best practices
- Benefits:
- Broadens our group perspective with reminders, new ideas or thinking that isn’t always top-of-mind
- Starting meetings with these educational discussions broadens the group energy beyond just “analyzing potential deals”, and helps members make stronger, more informed decisions
- Key Learnings: I was surprised by how enthusiastically the group embraced this education. I think the key is to keep the write up crisp and the discussion short and focused. I also regularly ask the group what they would like to learn more about and actively search ACA archives and upcoming webinars for these topics, so our discussions are relevant to what the group wants to learn.
Catherine Mott, BlueTree Allied Angels
As a founding ACA member and former Board Chair, I have been happy to see the value of ACA webinars as development content for our group. Our group has taken this online education to the next level by bringing more to the webinar content than anyone could get by watching webinars independently, I thought it would be interesting to create special group training sessions during which we use the webinars as the foundation for interactive discussion.
- Our Approach: Select key ACA webinars for group viewing at specially scheduled group educational meetings
- Process:
- Prior to meeting: Select a topic of special interest to angel group members e.g. Basil Peters video series on exits was well received
- Meeting preparation: Invite members to a 1 ½-2-hour education ‘class’ and provide related printed materials e.g. PPT deck, discussion points, related resources
- During meeting: Show video and stop at key points so that members can share their thoughts, ask questions and relate their own experience
- Benefits:
- The learning experience is enriched because of the group interaction; we learn from the video and from each other
- It is wonderful for members to share their voice on diverse topics and spur new discussions on important topics
- Key Learnings:
- The exits topic was especially helpful because members are asked to be on Boards and startup Boards are very unique.
- We learned a lot from the videos and discussion and are talking about a new round of topics or adding professional development from webinars to the front-end of meetings—by just starting meetings a little earlier.
John Sechrest, Seattle Angels
I joined Seattle Angel to help increase the number of successful Northwest angels through community investing and angel/startup education. We have used the live ACA webinar sessions as opportunities for our members to gather and have open discussion about the topic in real time. We then use the webinar for a deeper discussion on the topic.
Our approach: Schedule special angel group meetings to coincide with live ACA webinars to enable members to discuss the topic in real-time
- Process: A volunteer from the group helps to organize logistics such as selecting the webinar, determining meeting location, and inviting members to attend
- Benefits:
- Members who had an interest in the topic were able to interact live during the webinar session
- After the webinar we were able to continue the discussion in more depth
- Key Learnings:
- This approach was valuable for member education and we would like to continue it.
I recommend finding a group member to serve as the planning volunteer to coordinate the special meeting (location, logistics, etc.).
Directly Connecting Group Members to ACA
How Proactively Sharing Angel Group Member Emails Pays Off in Multiple Ways
Catherine Mott, BlueTree Allied Angels
Instead of simply following the pack, Catherine Mott is the type of angel leader that squints her eye and asks, “Now tell me why exactly do you do it that way”? And that’s exactly what Mott did when it came to ensuring that BlueTree Angel members had direct access from ACA to their membership benefits right from the get go.
Managing a group is hard; I don’t have time to hold every member’s hand when it comes to communicating what they can learn from ACA as well.”
- Approach: We provide periodic updates on our membership changes and growth to ACA so they may provide benefits directly to BlueTree members.
- Process:
- When a new member signs their documents to join BlueTree Angels we let them know that their ACA membership is also part of their group benefits. When we first started this we also sent a letter to current members with this same message and followed the same process
- We let members know that that the group pays for their membership in ACA; it comes out of their group dues. As we explain our BlueTree backend software system to members, we also explain how to register in the member-only section of the ACA website, and that they will start receiving updates from us and ACA as part of their membership*
*All ACA emails include a simple, one-step opt out link if a member prefers not to receive emails
- Benefits:
- We’re enabling our members. Now they have direct access to ACA education, webinars, events, blogs and helpful information that was limited to our group leaders. This limitation seemed selfish to me.
- Our members are so excited to know that they can use ACA directly to get a great deal of useful angel investor information
- We’ve overcome the misperception that ACA membership only benefits group leaders; Now everyone understands that ACA is an individual benefit
- Key Learnings:
- Our members are paying for their ACA benefit through their group dues and should have easy access to it. We give it to them and we have had no pushback at all. Our angels are very pleased to have it.”
Elaine Bolle, RTP Capital Associates
Elaine Bolle believes she’s not alone when it comes to this “aha” moment: “When I first joined my group I thought ACA was for group leaders. It wasn’t until I attended my first Summit that I saw that ACA is about helping every angel grow. I thought—this is the best kept secret on earth—we need to make sure every one of our members understands that direct access to ACA resources is already a part of their benefits.”
- Approach: We keep it simple and focused. We do two main things: We integrate ACA membership directly into our membership onboarding process, and we actively integrate ACA resources into our monthly meetings.
- Process:
- Membership onboarding: We explain to members that ACA membership is a direct benefit of joining RTP and that we will share their email with ACA so that they have direct access to ACA resources.
- Monthly ACA emails: RTP has an administrator and this person sends the ACA Angel Insights Monthly newsletter directly to members. Even though members also get ACA eNews directly, when the monthly ACA email comes directly from our group, members pay attention. This ensures that our members are always in the know.
- ACA Summit debriefs: As a general policy, RTP Capital encourages all members and especially the board to attend the summit. Typically, RTP Capital funds the registration fee to cover at least one leader to attend the annual ACA Summit attendance. Key takeaways, debriefs and oftentimes workshops from the sessions are presented to members at monthly meetings.
- Benefits:
- My job and the job of all RTP Capital leaders is easier. By sharing direct access to ACA resources we avoid having to answer the same questions repeatedly—it’s all on the ACA website.
- Members love the direct access to the ACA knowledge center and webinars. In a recent membership survey, we found that 60% of our members have attended an ACA webinar.
- Integrating ACA resources into our group helps us build a community of engaged investors. Education is such a big part of that and the more we all know, the more we want to share.
- Key Learnings:
- Understand that your members may believe that ACA is only for group leaders. It’s important to change this perception. It only takes a few basic changes to directly connect your members to ACA resources so that everyone benefits.
- Taking a passive approach to connecting members to ACA doesn’t work— we found that members just won’t take the time to connect. It’s critical to share your member emails with ACA. We have had zero members have an issue with this, so it’s a win-win.