Bill Burnham, hedge fund manager and former VC:
“Angel investors are becoming the dominant force in Consumer Internet Venture capital. The vacuum created by the withdrawal of VCs from traditional Seed and Series A opportunities in the Consumer Internet space has been filled by a motley collection of angel investors. It is angel investors, not VCs, that are writing checks based on good ideas, business plans, and “alpha sites”; not VCs. The importance of angel investors is such that it is not unusual these days to see an internet startup publicly announce its round of angel funding, when in the past such events did merit a public mention. Yes, angel investors have always provided seed money, but today they typically provide 100% of what was once considered Series A money as well.”
(If only there was a list of angel investors…)
There’s also a good discussion in the comments. Bill says:
“My take on most seed/ super-angel funds is surprise, a fairly cynical one. I think if you offered $1BN to the managers at these seed stage funds they would go from Seed focused to multi-stage in a remorseless heartbeat.”
“no, i wouldn’t trade my model for that bowl of bullshit, even for the bigger paycheck in the short-term. it’s just not sustainable.”
Read Bill’s full post.
I would like to hear from VCs who are co-investing and competing with these angels. What seed stage companies are you investing in? What were the company’s metrics like when you invested? Are you seed stage (plus follow-on investments) or truly multi-stage?
Angel investors are becoming the dominant force in consumer internet venture capital
Tolo Harbour Business Angel Support Group
CUHK is located next to the Tolo Harbour. Over the decades thousands of people have graduated and succeeded in their career. Many of them have become prominent and wealthy alumni of the school.
Making use of the strong alumni network, the Tolo Harbour Business Angel Support Group is an initiative of the Centre for building and serving the angel investor community in Hong Kong. We would like to recruit as members who are either experienced angel investors or high net-worth individuals,without experience,but keen to become angel investors.
Just found this via Sprouter (a Twitter for entrepreneurs) lets see if we can get them together with us.
Startup Therapy: Ten questions to ask yourself every month
This is a good list of questions that you really *should* be able to answer. If you can’t, probably you are trying to avoid having to deal with a problem.
