Archive for September 2018

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Recent progress to the American Innovation Act of 2018 (AKA “tax reform 2.0”) to include a proposal to protect Net Operating Losses (NOLs) of startups has the Angel Capital Association cheering.  ACA, along with the National Venture Capital Association, Biotechnology Innovation Organization and AdvaMed called for Congress to address an unintended consequence of rules blocking “loss trafficking.” The bill was introduced to reform rules that can unintentionally punish startups for attracting investments to support the growth of their companies.  Reform to the existing rules, written in the mid-1980s, will have significant impact on startup companies and their ability to gain full valuation for additional investments and exits.

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the board meeting of the Center for American Entrepreneurship.  This non-profit, non-partisan organization provides education and advocacy on the critical importance of entrepreneurs and startups to innovation, economic growth and job creation to America’s policymakers.  CAE has advocated for several issues that ACA cares about.

By: Charlie Brock, ACA Member, Launch Tennessee

Over the last five years as the CEO of Launch Tennessee, too often I’ve seen founders raise angel or seed funding, develop a product line and a small customer-base, but not gain any real traction.  

By: John O. Huston, ACA Chair Emeritus and Ohio TechAngels

Like most ACA member groups, the Ohio TechAngel Funds (OTAF) conduct postmortems after our exits, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.  From our positive exits, we’ve gleaned that even our best entrepreneurs have always fallen woefully short of their revenue projections.  From the autopsies of our losing investments, we’ve realized that rarely had we missed major risks, but often grossly underweighted their likelihood, impact, or both.  And, we had insufficiently discussed them with management to ensure all possible efforts were being taken to mitigate them.

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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