Angel Investors And The Venture Capitalists

These entrepreneurs start a company knowing from day one that their vision could change the world. They attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists. They hire the best and the brightest. Their job is to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.  When they find it, their focus on scale requires even more venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. Steve Blank acknowledged that scalable startups in innovation clusters (Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New York, Bangalore, Israel, etc.) make up a small percentage of entrepreneurs and startups but because of the outsize returns, attract almost all the risk capital.

Walnut Venture Associates are a group of angel investors. In 1997 the club had around a dozen individual investors, forming an “angel group”. Their primary targets are investments ranging from $250,000 to $1,000,000. This is due to the gap of capital funds initiated by the VC’s from not considering investments bellow $1 million. Also, angel investors can acquire significant equity at low cost, and help the growth of the company with their knowledge and expertise. By selecting only the most exceptional people and ideas, investments in startups can lead to massive returns on relatively small investments. As unexperienced entrepreneurs, they are a key resource to have in order to achieve quick growth, and secure the company’s early stages.

Business angels usually invest in companies around their home so they can check up on their investments.

Before now, only entrepreneurs in a few select areas with the right connections could be funded, and only then if their vision matched a VC or Angel Investors criteria or schedule. Consequently, only a few thousand VCs in the world could decide which entrepreneurial

The last twenty years the financial services industry encountered significant regulatory problems. Equity crowdfunding introduces an innovative manner to raise capital and provide greater societal benefits. Fundraising has been going on for hundreds of years, and crowdfunding is transforming the approach to developing funds. In American history, our railroads relied on private individuals to pay for the infrastructure and development (Davies, 2014). Railroad companies employed crowdfunding and investors had the incentive to contribute. Projections illustrate the equity-based crowdfunding industry in the United States (U.S.) will experience rapid growth because of regulatory changes stemming from the Jumpstart Our Business

10. According to, "Angel Investors: Who They Are and What They Do. Can I be One, Too?" which

Private equity investments are primarily made by private equity firms, venture capital firms, or angel investors, each with their own set of goals, preferences and investment strategies.

Angel Investors - The main business angels vary from venture capitalists in their motives and level of involvement. Often angels are more involved in the business, providing ongoing mentorship and advice based on experience in a particular industry. For that reason, matching angels and owners is critical. There are substantial easily locatable networks of angels. Pitching to them is no less demanding than to a venture capitalist as they still review hundreds of proposals and accept only a handful. Often the demands around exit strategies are different for an angel and they are satisfied with a slightly longer term investment (say 5-7 years compared to 3-4 for a venture capitalist).

Heather Evans is a very recent graduate from Harvard Business School and has been working on getting her venture off the ground for quite some time. She has the know-how and skill in her industry but not the funds. This is why she is seeking out investors. This is proving to be more difficult and time consuming than she had anticipated. I think most people have this experience at one time or another especially if they are starting their own business. The great ideas of the world do not always get all the support in the world.

1.What types of people are angel investors, and how are they different from venture capitalists?

Angel investors are those investors that are particularly interested in investing in companies early stage companies. Their investment capital is generally limited and if relevant, it has been advantageous for them to pool their funds as a group to not only participate in larger deals but also to diversify risk. They invest in exchange for ownership equity or convertible debt.

Investor is people who commit capital to have some ownership interest of a company. The investors could know the profitability of the company based on the Financial Highlight (page 7) or the

investors exist for larger amounts of capital such as VC funds and banks, entrepreneurial initiatives that require much smaller amounts to start with need to rely on friends and family or own savings. They then also make extensive use of bootstrapping techniques to mitigate their financial constraints, by boosting their short-term profits.

Crowdfunding creates funds for new projects by using internet and social media. This can benefit small business projects to obtain their required funds. A project receives small investments from wide range of individuals through web advertising and social media. The individuals (investors) who have invested in the project may receive incentives such as discounts on the products, early opportunity to purchase their products, inclusion of their name in the list of contributing founders etc., so, they are not purchasing the share of the company. Crowdfunding avoids going to the banks, friends and family to get funds. It also avoids giving up partial ownership of their company. The websites like www.rockethub.com, www.peerfunding.com,

The last one Venture capitalists. It is finance provided for an equity stake in a potentially high growth company.