Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Elizabeth Marchi, Frontier Angel Fund (Part 4)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Do you have any sector preference?

Liz: No, we just want to invest in companies that we can exit and make money in. We just don’t have the luxury. Now, I will tell you, we don’t invest in things we know absolutely nothing about.

We don’t invest in real estate because we feel there’s a lot of — well, there used to be a whole lot of other options for investing in real estate. And we don’t invest in movies, because nobody knows anything about movies. And oddly enough in Montana, we get quite a few requests for that. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ira Weiss, Hyde Park Angels (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Can you be more specific about the process how your students work with local businesses?

Ira: What I mean is that there are local startup companies that recruit our MBA students to work with them on their businesses. The local startup companies want to be part of the business plan competition because it gives them exposure and helps them to improve their business plans. Also, they get an audience of venture capitalists at the end of the business plan competition, and they get a lot of value-add from the school. In some cases, there are businesses that are started by students. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ira Weiss, Hyde Park Angels (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Could you be more specific about the fees?

Ira: What I mean is that some groups may charge a carry or a management fee. We don’t do that. Our underlying legal structure is a state nonprofit and whenever we make these investments. For example, we have an investment in a company called UICO, everybody gets together and makes an investment in UICO. That group of people will collect and extra 3%, but that’s just to cover the entity’s fees like accounting fees, whatever fees relate to that entity. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Elizabeth Marchi, Frontier Angel Fund (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: On average, from all the sources, how many pitches do you receive a month?

Liz: I’ve been keeping a running tab this year just out of my own interest, and I’m talking to about 20 entrepreneurs a month.

But when our fund meets, we usually have wind it down to two or three. That’s to get to common pitch to the fund.

So, if you do 40 entrepreneurs in two months, two are going to come and present. But then you have to remember, of those 40 that I talk to, maybe one will come present two months later because they’ve gone back and refined the plan, done more work, found a partner . . . you know, that kind of thing. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Ira Weiss, Hyde Park Angels (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the twenty-ninth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Ira Weiss, who is the faculty director at University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth) and co-manager of Hyde Park Angels,  an angel network that is affiliated with the university and invests in seed and early-stage companies, primarily in the Midwest. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Elizabeth Marchi, Frontier Angel Fund (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: So, not all of your fund investors are based in Montana?

Liz: No, five are not. Some are here part of the year, and they really wanted to be  part of this, and that was part of the discussion when we formed the fund. For example, of the 33 investors, at my last meeting, I had 27, which is phenomenal, three years into the fund. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Raymond Chan, Tech Coast Angels (Part 7)

By guest author Irina Patterson

Irina: Right. Do you see any issues in the angel ecosystem? Is there anything that can be improved?

Ray: I think the key thing is, investors like us have to get involved, to educate entrepreneurs.

For example, Silicon Valley is the best ecosystem in the whole wide world. And for us to even match Silicon Valley is a dream. It would take ten to twenty years to do that. So we dare not to try to be a Silicon Valley. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Elizabeth Marchi, Frontier Angel Fund (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson

This is the twenty-eighth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Elizabeth Marchi, fund coordinator at Frontier Angel Fund LLC. It’s a member managed pooled fund – that is, they review deals together and then vote to invest their pooled capital. Their investments range from $100,000 to $200,000 and they invest in companies based in Montana and the inland Pacific Northwest. >>>