By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

One of the best things about some ACA regional events is the opportunity for members to not only focus on learning, but also to participate in collaborative investing.  ACA members joined together in Des Moines, IA in September for the 2018 ACA Midwest Regional: Best of the Midwest with over 140 attendees.  Hosted by Plains Angels, angels from across the Midwest came to learn about latest industry trends, build relationships, minimize geographical barriers and partake in syndication opportunities. 

By: Ham Lord, Chairman of Launchpad Venture Group and Co-Founder of Seraf-investor.com and Christopher Mirabile, ACA Chair Emeritus, Managing Director at Launchpad Venture Group and Co-Founder of Seraf-investor.com

At Launchpad, we invest in dozens of companies every year. In the past, we frequently faced situations where we put a lot of work into diligence with a company and suddenly found out we were miles apart on deal term expectations and couldn't close the gap. This is a waste of time for all involved, and is the kind of frustration that leads to “deal fatigue” for investors trying to build a portfolio of investments. It can also lead to bad feelings and an increasing sense of mistrust between investors and entrepreneurs.

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

It's my pleasure to announce Seraf Investor as ACA’s new Education Partner. Seraf co-founders Hambleton Lord and Christopher Mirabile are considered two of the top angel investors in not only New England, but the world – and our missions to educate and professionalize the angel communities align extremely well.  As ACA was embarking on our new strategic initiative to provide more education for our members, we learned that Seraf was also expanding their extensive article series into books and courses and we all realized we had a match made in heaven.  Below you can read Seraf’s account of its new education materials.  Know that ACA is incorporating and adapting the content from “Ham” and Christopher into ACA seminars we deliver at ACA events and provide in ACA member communities in many formats.  If we are successful in our Regional Innovation Strategies grant proposal, we’ll also be able to work together on a deep set of online learning videos and podcasts for you.

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.

By: Tim Keane, ACA Member, Golden Angel Investors

This post originally appeared on Tim's blog.

Preparation: Key to Successful Private Transactions, especially in Hot Markets

By: Marianne Hudson, ACA Executive Director

This blog post first appeared on the Mainstar Trust blog.  

Being an angel investor has a certain cache. You’re sought after by entrepreneurs and assess the value of their ideas. You choose whether or not to invest, and how to make those investments – whether it is a self-directed IRA or with non-retirement funds.  And when things go well, you make money and you are a part of getting a business off the ground. In this light, who wouldn’t want to be an angel investor? 

By: Sarah Dickey, ACA Membership Director

Engaging the next generation of investors is something that is becoming an increased priority for angel groups to focus their efforts.  ACA member groups are developing volunteer analysts or similar programs to incorporate and educate young people while engaging them in important work for the group.  Benefits of this type of activity include augmented practices, increasing support and empowering individuals for the future.  Here are two examples of ACA member groups that are utilizing volunteer programs to invest in the next generation of angel investors.

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

Note: This article is the twelfth in an ongoing series on valuation and capitalization. To learn more about the financial mechanics of early stage investing, download this free eBook today Angel Investing by the Numbers: Valuation, Capitalization, Portfolio Construction and Startup Economics or purchase our books at Amazon.com.

How do you define success as an angel investor? Are you successful if you invested in one grand slam like Amazon or Google?

By: Ethel Rubin, PhD, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NIH Office of the Director Office of Extramural Research

Thank you for welcoming me, my National Institutes of Health colleagues, and our four sponsored companies to your Annual Summit in Boston last month! It was a pleasure to speak with many of you in person, to learn more about angel investing and your respective sweet spots. We hope you learned more about NIH’s seed investment fund. National Institutes of Health invests over $1B funding available to life science companies annually in the form of grants and contracts.

But, the Institutes and Centers that comprise NIH have services that go beyond funding. Companies have used these types of additional resources and services for further development of their technologies towards commercialization. The product development enabling programs highlighted below allow small businesses to apply for free services – why shouldn’t your company utilize them?

By: Emily Angold, ACA Marketing Manager

Collaboration with smart angels to enhance our ecosystem is a top priority for ACA and many other angel organizations.  ACA recently signed cooperation agreements with two of our colleague angel associations, one with the European Business Angels Network (EBAN) and the other with Business Angels Europe (BAE).  The two agreements are similar, with the goals of sharing knowledge and content, and cooperating on events, among other things.