Archive for May 2016

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.

By Craig Mullett - President of Branison Group, a corporate finance firm based in Connecticut, USA. Craig is an active angel investor as a director of the Angel Investor Forum. He is also a founder of AngelHub, Africa's first angel group and helped in establishing Trident Angels, the first Caribbean angel group. 

(Editor’s Note:  We liked Craig’s notes from the ACA Summit so much that we thought other ACA members and investors would also get value from them.)

Smart money
Kay Koplovitz (USA Network/ Springboard Enterprises)

  • Be open to serendipitous moments where entrepreneurial solutions may be uncovered
  • Angels need to network where there are innovation pipelines to stay close to cutting edge startups 
  • Plan how your capital will be able to move startups "up the escalator" to the next capital raise and ultimately to exit

By: Dave Berkus, Dave Berkus, ”Super angel” investor, tech futurist  

--A model for angel-led investment deals and syndication--

Congratulations to Cognition Therapeutics, Inc. (CogRx), a Pennsylvania life sciences company, which ACA recognized as the outstanding angel-financed company for 2016, when they received the Luis Villalobos Award. First among twenty-five finalists, a committee of experienced angel investors selected the firm above its competitors for numerous reasons.

By: Ham Lord, Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group and Co-Founder of Seraf-investor.com

This post originally appeared on Seraf-investor.com

Over the past few years, there has been much talk about the importance of investing both financial and human capital into the rapidly expanding entrepreneurial ecosystem. From our perspective, human capital is as important as financial capital in driving the long term success of startup companies. So how do we go about the job of applying human capital to foster this success? 

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Victory! With lots of work by ACA and many leaders, the House passed the HALOS Act, which would ensure companies presenting in demo days would not have tripped the general solicitation trigger and therefore be required to take extra measures to verify all of their investors are accredited.  This is something the entire startup ecosystem – investors, entrepreneurs, accelerators, incubators, universities and more - cares about.  We will now concentrate our efforts on the Senate to make the bill a reality. The bill was approved by a 325-89 vote, meaning it was relatively bi-partisan.

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ACA On the Road by Angel Capital Association  on  March 11
ACA Announces Keynote Speaker for Summit: Kwame Anku by Angel Capital Association  on  March 08