News About Startups, Entrepreneurs & Angel Investors
We are proud to be world’s largest online network of angel investors and entrepreneurs – we even passed 1 million users at the end of 2018. This scale means our data can reveal some interesting insights into the angel investment landscape. We’ve collected this information into a report which we’ve called the ‘State of the Angel Investment Nation’.
This first version of the report digs into the trends in the UK based on the data from more than 100,000 businesses and 30,000 investors.
Fundraising is rarely easy. But the challenges faced vary between industries. The manufacturing sector, in particular, has its own pathways and hurdles to be navigated when it comes to fundraising.
Below, I cover the sources of finance available for manufacturing businesses and offer advice on which to choose for your business.
Figures reported in January 2018 show that 17,243 USA companies like AMSC USA entered insolvency – a 4.2% increase from the year before. It’s no secret that the first few years of a business are a critical time for its survival. The survival rate of business to year 5 is 44.1%.
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We are in a period of unprecedented innovation and development across a wide range of sectors. Many of the new and impending technologies are so novel that it is unclear how existing regulation systems will manage them.
AI, drones and autonomous vehicles are just some examples of technologies giving regulators pause for thought. All three examples raise difficult moral as well as practical questions; and given the rate of innovation, it now seems like too many questions are coming at once.
The role of regulators is to ensure new technologies can be deployed in safe and meaningful ways. But this often slows the speed with which a new technology can come to market.
The term ‘podcast’ was coined to describe audio content (other than music) that you could download to your iPod – you know, that Apple product long since ingested by the iPhone. But the term lives on and its popularity is on the rise.
According to Edison Research, 64 per cent of Americans are now familiar with the term “podcast” and over 4 in 10 have listened to at least one podcast. 73 million Americans listen to podcasts every week; their average weekly listening time is an astonishing 6 hours 37 minutes.
At a glance, the Autumn Budget 2018 is a win for entrepreneurs and SME’s. If your personal income is less than £100,000 and you’re a ‘genuine’ entrepreneur, taxation rules and entrepreneurs’ relief remain favourable. The more indirect budget effects could also be highly beneficial.
Established entrepreneur and founder and MD of globally-recognised, Absolute Translations, Sergio Afonso summaries the 2018 Budget’s impact on UK entrepreneurs and SMEs.
Phillip Hammond decided to meet halfway regarding the contested £10m entrepreneurs’ relief allowance, choosing to revise rather than abolish. The change is an increased minimum holding period from one year to two prior to selling a business.
The gender pay gap has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp have brought sexism issues to mainstream attention. This is true across a spectrum of industries. But there is a nuance when it comes to the startup investment space. Female founders are still underfunded compared to their male counterparts.
As an industry, it’s time to close this gap. To do so, will require a concerted effort from all parties – founders, funds, networks and investors – to overcome biases and to support merit wherever it is found.
The team at Angel Investment Network and SeedTribe have received a lot of positive press coverage recently including the Financial Times, the Guardian and BBC Radio 4.
It’s always rewarding to get public attention for your hard work. But more importantly, it’s great that our message is reaching a wider audience. Especially those people we can potentially help to find funding or great investment opportunities!
The most recent publications build a nice picture of what we are trying to accomplish over the coming months.
Impact investing is a hot topic at the moment. And rightly so! We find this so encouraging because it is timely validation for the work we’ve been doing at our impact crowdfunding platform, SeedTribe. But there is more work to do before this industry can deliver the positive outcomes it promises. Part of this work involves incentivising the millennial generation of investors by giving them access to the best impact investments. Last month I wrote a piece on this ‘democratisation’ of impact investments for Angel News.
The cryptocurrency market has caught the attention of many people in recent years – from traders who want to make a quick profit to angel investors concerned about the authenticity and transparency of the system. Within the startup community, ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) have come into prominence.
So far, ICOs have helped many entrepreneurs raise funding far more rapidly than traditional avenues. Many investors too have reaped the rewards of being able to exchange an asset that would normally only realise its value when and if the business exited via trade sale or IPO.
Raising funding for your startup is, in part, a navigation problem. This is especially true when you are doing it for the first time. Entrepreneurs often focus on the problems right in front of them and so lose sight of the bigger picture. It is always helpful to approach immediate problems with knowledge of the lie of the land ahead.
This infographic on how startup funding works is one of my all-time favourites. It neatly and concisely sets out a typical map of what a fundraising journey looks like over the lifetime of a successful company.
‘Due diligence’ sounds awfully serious.
When it came into use in the mid-fifteenth century, it simply meant ‘reasonable care’. It became a specialised legal/business term in the 1930s when the US government passed a law to ensure that securities brokers disclosed sufficient information when selling to investors.
It is now used as a general term for the process of verifying information.
The level of due diligence required and the level of due diligence possible varies depending on the information being checked. Naturally, a high-level corporate merger would require extensive due diligence.
Podcasts are becoming some of the most avidly consumed content available. More and more people are tuning for their ‘microdose’ of wisdom from industry leaders and pioneers. It’s a great and easy way to broaden your mind while you commute, work, cook, exercise and relax.
I’ve got in on the act with my colleague, Ed Stephens, from the senior team at Angel Investment Network.
On our show, The Startup Microdose Podcast, we interview successful entrepreneurs and investors to unpack their stories, opinions, quirks and wisdom.
In the past few years, there has been a dramatic surge in interest relating to so-called ‘impact’ companies and investments. Public awareness and concern for global economic, environmental and social issues are at an all-time high. We attribute this in part to the so-called ‘Blue Planet Effect‘ and in part, to the ever more ominous severity of the issues we face. As a result, institutions like United Nations have set out strategies like their Sustainable Development Goals to help solve these issues (more on these below).
My first project when I joined Angel Investment Network back in 2014 was to organise a pitching event in central London. We selected five of the most exciting UK companies who were fundraising; we had no specific agenda to include impact companies – we just wanted innovation! We prepped them to pitch to 150 investors whom we had specially invited from our network.
what3words was one of those companies.
Mike Lebus & James Badgett, the founders of Angel Investment Network, had already invested in what3words’ seed round – so they were keen for Chris Sheldrick, the CEO and co-founder, to put in a good performance.
Last month, I published our first ‘Impact Investing Interview’ with Work For Good who are revolutionising the market for corporate charity donations. Since the publication of that interview, Work For Good is now overfunding (accepting pledges until 30th April) on SeedTribe (Angel Investment Network’s impact-conscious crowdfunding platform). Thanks to those of you who contributed and shared!
For those new to impact investment, the post starts with a concise definition of impact investment, its benefits to investors and its ability to bring about positive and lasting change in the world.
Here’s our list of the top women founders we’ve worked with over the years. Why? To celebrate International Women’s Day 2018, of course!
There are some great names and some great companies. So in no particular order, our women of the moment and their success stories so far…
Pip started out in the British civil service, then worked with MTV (actually launching MTV in New Zealand aged just 24). She then founded a ‘LinkedIn for creatives’ called The Loop in Australia.
Strict due diligence was not always necessary.
In the past, if you wanted to find investment for your business, your options were closely tied to the reach of your personal network.
This had the following consequences:
On the one hand, any investor you were introduced would most likely have come from a referral you trusted. As a result, trusting the prospective investor and their credentials was relatively easy. Most of the due diligence was accomplished via the intimacy of the referral.
On the other hand, your reach would have been limited to your network. And as a result, many businesses would have failed to find funding because their entrepreneurs weren’t linked to any ‘Old Boys’ Club’ or similar.
Last week, I wrote an article called ‘How to Update your Investors for best results’. The post set out the importance of updating your investors; and how you should go about it. I laid out a useful (hopefully!) formula for your updates. And gave you some real-world examples from fast-growth companies in my network like Sweatcoin and ScreenCloud.
The post proved more popular than I expected; a number of people have been kind enough to contact me with their thoughts. The response was positive except for one thing: I had only covered one aspect of a broader theme…
Kresimir Budinski first reached out to me through LinkedIn. He is the founder of Air Ticket Arena – the first fully-automated platform allowing passengers to bid for unsold seats on scheduled flights; and helping airlines to recuperate some of the £120 billion in lost sales each year through unsold seats.
He recently closed a £350,000 of seed fundraising through Angel Investment Network.
Kresimir, or ‘The Bishop’, as he is affectionately known by his team, complimented me on my article about SEIS & EIS Tax relief. He had apparently used it as an explainer throughout his fundraising. Both for investors he had found through Angel Investment Network and other channels.
Investors are all looking for a startup investment they believe will be successful. That much is self-evident. Of course, some investors will be looking to invest in companies in which they are interested or experienced. But ultimately, everyone is linked by the shared ambition to back winners.
So that begs the question – How do you pick a winner?
The answer to this comes in three parts: the first is to do with Deal Flow and will be discussed in this post; the second concerns Deal Evaluation which was discussed in a previous post; and the third part is to do with Due Diligence, which will be covered at a later date.
