ACA Members

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Although ACA itself is only eleven years old, several of our current member angel groups trace their beginnings back much further than that. A total of nine groups have now been in existence for 20 years or more. Here is that honor roll and the founding year for each. Congratulations to all!

Puget Sound Venture Club

1985

Rockies Venture Club

1985

Investors' Circle

1992

Private Investors Forum

1993

Band of Angels

1994

Tech Coast Angels

1997

Walnut Venture Associates

1997

Alliance of Angels

1997

Sierra Angels

1997

The latest to achieve that impressive 20-year mark is Sierra Angels of Incline Village, Nevada, the angel group from which our new Board Chair, Linda Smith, hails. I was honored to attend the group’s anniversary party yesterday, along with ACA Board members Jim Connor and Kevin Learned.  We look forward to helping more interested member groups celebrate their 20th anniversaries and thank all of you for supporting new companies that create jobs and innovation.

By Graeme Thickins, ACA PR Team

Did you ever wish you’d have had a chance to meet or chat with someone at the ACA Summit or any of our other events, but never had the opportunity to run into them? Well, now you can — via brief interviews posted on the new ACA video library. It’s your chance to get to know interesting people, with great insights, better. The full set of ACA videos are posted on our Vimeo channel. You can view these videos without a Vimeo account, or you can create a free account, and then follow any channels of your choice — which we suggest you do with the ACA channel, of course! If you do that, then you’ll be notified whenever there’s a new video posted on our channel.

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

I have the privilege of working with one of the hardest working boards of directors on the planet at the Angel Capital Association.  Members and friends may not realize how much time, effort and wisdom 18 people put into our association, but I see it every day in our programming, resources, financial planning, and much more.

ACA members should be aware of two important things that have happened in the last month with the ACA Board:

By Graeme Thickins, ACA PR Team

Following on from Part 1 of our recap on the 2017 ACA Summit in San Francisco, we have more great insights to pass along from the event. The following is a summary of notes gathered by members of another angel group that attended the event.

Summit Insights from Victoria Barnard and Aviva Ajmera, Women’s Capital Connection

By Graeme Thickins, ACA PR Team

More than 650 angel investors came together for a very full three days of learning and networking at the 2017 ACA Summit in San Francisco April 26-28. Attendees represented 42 American states, 5 Canadian provinces, 18 countries, and more than 36% were women – a new record for the annual ACA event. It would take a book to fully recap the entire event, but here are some notes and quotes that will give you a taste of what transpired.

Anna deTiege, ACA Membership Consultant

The Angel Capital Association is pleased to announce the three finalists for the 2017 Luis Villalobos Award, a national award recognizing ingenuity, creativity, and innovation among startups: DesignMedix, Magnetic Insight, and Peloton Technology. These were among many companies nominated by ACA’s membership of angel investors.

The three finalist companies will be honored and the winner announced April 27 at the 2017 ACA Summit in San Francisco. The award is named in memory of Luis Villalobos, whom angel investors admired nationwide for his active investing and mentoring truly innovative companies.

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

The Angel Capital Association has some wonderful member angels and organizations and I’m glad so many of them actively share their knowledge and deals with other ACA members.  If you haven’t taken a tour of media coverage of ACA members this year, it is worth your time. About 60 media stories about ACA members were published in the first ten weeks of 2017, and here are a few of my favorites:

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Three ACA member organizations have really put on their hiking boots with excellent adventures and exits in late 2016.  On top of some really great investor returns, they also include a couple of important social returns that I really like.  Let me tell you about them:

I have to admit that while I have really enjoyed being an angel investor and meeting such interesting people, but the real fun didn’t start until I had an exit.  I was lucky enough to be one of 40+ investors in EyeVerify, which was acquired in September by Ant Financial, a subsidiary of Alibaba for more than $100 million.  There’s nothing like getting that return check – or hearing the ins and outs of the acquisition from the entrepreneur and angels on the board!

This made me wonder how many other ACA members also had this kind of fun.  In a quick bit of website research, I found an incomplete list of acquisitions and IPOs for portfolio companies of ACA members in 2016 below.  These ACA members are from throughout North America, not just the usual venture hotspots.  I don’t know how many angels were involved in these exits, but congrats to them and the entrepreneurs who led those companies.

The following is part of our periodic ACA Blog series highlighting ACA member expertise and insights on resources for angels.  The topics will vary and include ways ACA angels are making best use of their time – and often ACA benefits – to make smart investment decisions.  This tip is how Women’s Capital Connection engages their members in educational discussions based on ACA webinars. Thank you Aviva Ajmera for sharing! 

We look forward to more member tips for angels.  When you have a resource to share with angels please contact Sarah Dickey, ACA Membership Director to learn more. 

By: 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. 

Subscribe