Investments

By: Kevin Learned and Denise Dunlap, Sage Growth Capital

You may have been hearing a lot of buzz recently around ‘alternative’ investment structures in private investing; this has been a particularly hot topic among angel investors. This blog post departs from our usual musings on how to efficiently and effectively use syndicates (aka SPVs or single purpose vehicles) to discuss our latest investment adventure: the launch of a revenue-based fund. 

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

Note: This article is the eleventh 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.

As your angel career develops, and you start to build a larger portfolio of companies, you are increasingly asked to make follow-on investments. Not only do companies need investment to get off the ground, the faster they grow, the more cash they need. Whether to follow-on, and how to follow-on, are questions which have long given rise to angel debate. We’ll tackle that topic in depth here, but I’ll start out by confessing to bias right up front: Christopher and I are both believers that follow on investments are essential to achieving good returns. We firmly defend and negotiate for pro-rata rights to participate in future financings. Our overall perspective is that with your earlier checks you are basically buying options on a front row seat which comes with the right to add more “smart money” into the winners as they begin to show promise

By: Kevin Learned and Denise Dunlap, Boise Angel Alliance

Terms like “warrants, waterfalls and preferences” can be confusing and intimidating when attempting to understand a capitalization table (aka cap table); it is no wonder we are often asked for a simple way to understand them! This article will give a brief overview of why cap tables are important and introduce a simple model to use early in the due diligence process.

By: Sarah Dickey, ACA Membership Director

The Angel Capital Association is delighted to announce the four finalists for the Luis Villalobos Award, a highly regarded, North American-wide award that honors ingenuity, creativity and innovation among startups backed by ACA members: Catalyst OrthoScience, CNote, Oculogica and PhotoniCare.  “These companies are at the top of their game and represent the pinnacle of startup innovation and ingenuity,” said ACA Executive Director, Marianne Hudson.  The finalists will be honored and the winner revealed on April 19, 2018 at the world’s largest gathering of angel investors, the 2018 ACA Summit in Boston, MA. 

This award is in honor of Luis Villalobos, who in 1997 founded one of the largest and most respected angel organizations in the world, Tech Coast Angels.  Luis was a leader in the angel investing arena by making 57 personal angel investments, educating angels and always looking to invest in and mentor the most innovative companies.  Luis was a true “leading light” in the angel community. 

By Solomon Brenner, ACA Member (Keiretsu Forum Mid-Atlantic).  This post is adapted from an original post on Startup2Angel.

Whether the patent process is worthwhile and beneficial depends on the inventor, the opportunity and the timing. Deciding to go through with the process can be intimidating, costly and time-consuming. That’s why I decided to call Danielle Williams, an attorney at Winston & Strawn who has handled dozens of patent cases.

Some of the benefits of patenting an innovation include:

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.

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