AwakenAngels

Is this founder going to be successful with whatever it is they're working on? It really just comes down to what makes you excited about investing in co-founders versus investing in solo founders.

What appealed to you about the idea of angel investing, angel investors that you had met prior to getting started? You said it yourself, like you've invested in hundreds of companies, so you clearly liked it.

But what got you into it in the first place?

Oh, I think it's really addictive because I think that there's something really amazing about believing in somebody, sort of being that early belief in somebody's company and saying that you're really excited about what they're doing and you're actually willing to put some money behind that belief.

I'm not a person who's collecting things in order to resell them later.

So I actually think it's kind of a, in some ways, a sad day when a company exits, even if it makes me money, because ultimately that means that, you know, I'm no longer a collector of that, you know, that company, though I suppose that I, you know, I have sort of like the history of having worked with that company.

But I think the angel investors generally do it because they think it's fun.

They think it's exciting to work with these companies and to see them really early on.

So it's summer of 08, and Mark and Ben are like, yeah, we're going to do this.

They've been doing angel investing for a long time with their own money.

And they said, look, it'd be a lot more fun if we institutionalize this and lay out and raise money.

We were literally having this conversation in summer of 08.

We're going to build this whole services part of our business.

And we're going to market on that basis because what we didn't have to market on was we didn't have the, like the long history of a track record in the business, right? So to this day, right, if you go to Sequoia, who's an amazing, you know, player in the space, if you go to their conference rooms, you'll see Cisco in the, you know, a poster of Cisco and Apple and, you know, Google and all these other things.

Like we had none of that, right? We had Mark and Ben had done their own, you know, Angel Investing, and of course, the two of them had had success as entrepreneurs, but like, we couldn't compete against that.

So what they rightly did was they said, look, if we can't compete on what people are competing on today, we have to change the rules of the road and go compete on something else.

And then we reform the fund again the next year and do it again.

We'll be doing Angel NB7 starting in January.

We formed, as things grew, we started to think, well, these people need a second fund to go to after they've expanded a little bit.

They need a seed fund, not just a pre-seed fund, but a seed fund.

And a bunch of them get investments.

Sometimes we have a little fund that's affiliated with the group that matches the investment that the angels individually put into these companies.

You know, now it all links up well with the angel creation that we're doing through Angel Envy.

Because at the end of that, if people like it, they will oftentimes become an LP in one of the funds.

Wann du dat kanns-- Dat huelen ech och elo als Ofschlosswuert, dass du sos, eben, du, du gëss dem Ecosystem eppes zeréck.

Natierlech, wann der sou investéiert, wëlls de do och, wëlls de am nächste Stonn sou méi erëmkommen.

Mee de Beräich do, de Fréiss fannen ech och méi grouss ginn, well dat, dat sinn déi nächst Business Angels, dat sinn déi nächst Mentoren, äh, vun der nächster Generatioun vu Start-up-Grënner, déi mer elo, wa mer fënnef, zéng Joer schwätzen, dann fannen ech dat excellent.

Thibault, ech soen der gréisste Merci, dass de komm bass haut.

Mir sinn leider schon um Schluss ukomm.

Yeah, maybe is there anyone from the audience who wants to come up who's been through some of this early stage work?

Like an angel financing where they had done a debt note, something like that? Anybody? That's all right.

I can come up with the scenario.

Who knows what an angel financing or a note financing is in an early stage company? Anybody? Yeah.

You want a microphone out to you? Oh, OK.

So one of the challenges that you always have when you're getting your initial financing is what's the value of the business? What does someone pay per share? So one, it could be many different things.