Editor’s note: Seed and angel investors are actively looking for deals, which is good news for entrepreneurs in the audience at the Southeast Venture Capital Conference, writes Jim Roberts. The executive director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of North Carolina Wilmington is blogging about SEVC for WRAL Tech Wire.
ATLANTA – Jason Caplain of Bull City Venture Partners went right to the heart of the issue with the Seed and Angel Investor Roundtable Panel at SEVC in Atlanta on Wednesday morning. His first question: When was your most recent investment?
All four investors mentioned deals they had made within the last month.
Suddenly the crowd of entrepreneurs perked up and they knew this was not going to be the usual “go through the motions” panel discussion.
While three out of the four investors were from the Atlanta market, the fourth investor Frank Plastina of ARC & Company (and formerly of Tekelek) and the moderator Caplain have their home bases in North Carolina. [Plastina recently joined the board of directors at the First Flight Venture Center as he steps up his role in backing entrepreneurs.]
The investors continued to lay out their usual angel investment amounts and explained to the audience the tremendous amount of deal flow they see on a monthly basis.
The investors continued to nail home the point that their deal flow continues to come from referrals, personal network, hackathons, trade shows and networking events.
Most of the investors admitted they had not invested in someone they met at a startup conference except Ashish Mistry of BLH Venture Partners had met a female entrepreneur and later invested in her company.
Investor Randall Foster of Focus Investment Bank proudly crowed he had landed a future investor at the 2007 SEVC event in Washington DC when he was an entrepreneur.
When asked about the current role of angels in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and as the primer for the Series A venture capitalists and institutional investors, the angels on stage admitted they don’t like to be crammed down in later rounds. A few of the investors liked that they had enough capital where they had dry powder to do follow on rounds themselves.
The investors continued to discuss their investment criteria with insights into wanting the founders to have persistence, dedication and consistency. They wanted the entrepreneurs to be committed to the company and make the jump to do it full time.
The investors also wanted the founders to be coachable, and willing to listen to advice from mentors and other serial entrepreneurs.
The founders need to be dreamers and leaders that are able to sell the vision to get other talented people to join the founding team.
One investor said “If the entrepreneur is not willing to take the risk to leave their job to become a full time entrepreneur, why should I take the risk with my money.”
They also wanted the entrepreneurs to have a track record of entrepreneurship and the company needed to have a defendable position with intellectual property protection and/or a leading brand position.
Editor’s note: Jim Roberts is Executive Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of North Carolina Wilmington. CIE is a new accelerator facility to nurture the startup ecosystem of Wilmington and coastal North Carolina. CIE will host the Coastal Entrepreneur Awards on May 22 in Wilmington. You can follow Jim on twitter @UNCW_Startups or visit www.uncw.edu/cie
