By: Cheryl Isen, Media Relations for Angel Capital Association

Assurex Health is one of three companies that won the Luis Villalobos Award for innovation that also had an exit within one month in 2016.  Details on each of the exits are included in three blog posts on October 10.

• Company: Assurex Health founded 2006; won Luis Villalobos Award in 2012

• Investors/ACA group members: Queen City Angels, Ohio Tech Angels, and North Coast Angel Fund
• Acquirer: Myriad Genetics (NASDAQ: MYGN) $225 million up front with the potential for $185 million in additional performance-based milestones

Assurex Health is a personalized medicine company dedicated to helping healthcare providers get the genetic information they need to determine the right medication for individual patients suffering from neuropsychiatric and other medical conditions. Assurex Health’s proprietary technology is based on pharmacogenomics— the study of the genetic factors that influence an individual’s response to drug treatments—as well as evidence-based medicine and clinical pharmacology. The “GeneSight” test was developed in the Assurex Health clinical laboratory and is based on patented technology licensed from two world renowned medical centers, Mayo Clinic and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, which continue to be research collaborators.

By Cheryl Isen, Media Relations for Angel Capital Association

EyeVerify is one of three companies that won the Luis Villalobos Award for innovation that also had an exit within one month in 2016.  Details on each of the exits are included in three blog posts on October 10.

• Company: EyeVerify Inc., founded 2012; won Luis Villalobos Award in 2014
• Investors/ACA group members: Mid-America Angels, Nebraska Angels, and Women’s Capital Connection
• Acquirer: Ant Financial Services Group (an affiliate of China-based Alibaba) deal value of over$100 million

Eyeprint ID, created by EyeVerify, transforms an ordinary selfie into a key that protects your digital life. One look opens mobile devices, logs you into apps and secures your mobile payments. The patented, software-only biometric solution is 99.99% accurate and extremely scalable. In less than one second, with no add-on hardware, employees and customers can experience password-free mobility. Several large Android device manufacturers and a growing number of notable financial institutions have deployed “Eyeprint ID,” delivering convenient, secure, private authentication to millions of consumers today.

By: Cheryl Isen, Media Relations for Angel Capital Association

Retrosense Therapeutics is one of three companies that won the Luis Villalobos Award for innovation that also had an exit within one month in 2016.  Details on each of the exits are included in three blog posts on October 10.

• Company: RetroSense Therapeutics, LLC founded 2009 and 2015 Luis Villalobos Award winner
• Investor/ACA group member: BlueWater Angels
• Acquirer: Allergan (NYSE: AGN); Upfront cash payment of $60M and future milestone payments that could be in the hundreds of millions

RetroSense is developing life-enhancing gene therapies designed to restore vision in patients suffering from blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa and advanced dry age-related macular degeneration. There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to improve or restore vision in patients with these retinal degenerative conditions. The company's approach to using optogenetics in vision restoration is based on pioneering, proprietary research conducted at Wayne State University and Massachusetts General Hospital. RetroSense has worldwide exclusive rights to the relevant intellectual property from both institutions. 

By: Elaine Bolle, ACA Board Member and RTP Capital

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.  The first tip is how RTP Capital provides their members direct access to ACA benefits as part of the group’s member onboarding process. Thank you Elaine Bolle (link to profile) 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: Catherine Mott, ACA Board Member and BlueTree Allied Angels

Today ACA announces Angel to Angel Tips, a periodic ACA Blog 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.  The first tip is how BlueTree Allied Angels build interactive member education around ACA Angel Insights webinars during in-person investor meetings.  Thank you Catherine Mott 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: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

While I was preparing our ACA Member eNews this morning, I was especially struck by how much ACA member angels have helped create a great library of education and insights on ACA’s website.  Here are just of few of these resources for your investigation:

• Rising Tide Education Program – Videos, Webinars and Articles on Angel Fundamentals

If you are looking for content on the building blocks of angel investing, go to ACA’s education resource center. There you can find videos, webinars, and articles on critical angel processes from portfolio building to valuation to due diligence and more.  The latest video is Introduction to Cap Tables, by ACA Board Member Kevin Learned, and he has also provided a model basic cap table to experiment with.  These programs are done in partnership with the Rising Tide Education Program, with support from the Kauffman Foundation.  In addition to Kevin, ACA member instructors include Victoria Barnard, Brigitte Baumann, Barbara Clarke, Marcia Dawood, Angela Jackson, Bill Payne, and Wendee Wolfson.

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: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

Know someone who would add great value to ACA leadership?  Could be you, could be someone else!  Each year ACA looks to add talent to its Board of Directors to keep the organization strong, growing, and evolving.  The board is now seeking nominations from the ACA membership at large of people whom you believe have great value to add to the ACA’s mission.  We seek members of the angel investor community who have demonstrated unusual ability to organize and lead others in angel investing activities.  We particularly seek nominations of people with experience in marketing, deal collaboration and syndication, building membership in angel groups, and in wielding political influence in high places.  We seek persons of high activity level, energy, and willingness to serve in order to advance the ACA’s mission.  Email your nominations to Dick Reeves, Chairman of the ACA Governance Committee, by February 22, and include your own comments about your nominee, along with the names and contact info of two others who know the person well and can attest to their value. You may nominate yourself, but please adhere to the two-person recommender formula if you do.

Over the holidays, I took a look at the “Member News” section of our website, where we catalog the media coverage of ACA member investors and organizations and found more than 250 stories in 2015 about exits, new investments, milestones, economic impact, investor features and much more.  ACA members are getting it done, and done well!

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com

Editor’s Note:  ACA’s annual Fall workshop, now called the Angel Insights Exchange, will be in New Orleans on November 9-10.  We picked New Orleans not only for its iconic activities and food, but because it has a growing entrepreneurial vibrance.  Here’s a taste of the city’s growth in the form of the NO/LA Angel Network.

Despite the devastation Hurricane Katrina caused 10 years ago, the huge disaster that hit New Orleans brought a silver lining. With a giant microscope on the area, young people were drawn to New Orleans and the surrounding region to help.

In the years immediately following Katrina, young people turned out in droves. They came to volunteer, to rebuild and to educate children, but then something interesting happened. Many liked the area and stayed. Their friends came too. Over time all these new NO/LA (New Orleans/ Louisiana) residents perpetuated an explosion of entrepreneurial activity—something the area desperately needed.