Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What’s the average dollar amount you invest?

Alan: Normally, the average is about $500,000 that we’ll invest initially in every company. It may be a little less, maybe a little above. The largest initial investment we ever made was about $750,000. But it normally hovers around $500,000. When you factor in follow-on capital that may be needed, we may be into companies for over $1 million. Generally, the initial investment will be around $500,000. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Alan: That would be followed closely by the competitive advantage that the company has, particularly if it’s a sustainable competitive advantage, that would allow them to attack the market.

The stage of the company’s development . . . we generally do not look very seriously at pre-revenue companies any longer. We have in years past, but we learned the hard way that that’s not necessarily where we want to invest. So, the stage of the company’s development is certainly a factor. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Alan: Another aspect – and this may be more personal to me than it is to Springboard as an organization – is that one of the other major challenges for angel organizations is communicating with entrepreneurs.

When you see as many deals as we do here – we see about 300 a year – you can spend an entire day, every single day, on the telephone with entrepreneurs and not really get a whole lot done for that day.

On the other side, it’s extremely important to the people who communicate with you and interest you in their opportunities. They deserve our courtesy, our respect, and our responsiveness so it is a constant struggle to be responsive back to the people who apply or who are seeking capital. That is a huge challenge. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: You mentioned AngelSoft. How do you use AngelSoft?

Alan: Very sparingly. We’ll probably cease using it at the end of this year. We’re not particularly fans of proprietary software. We deal with a tremendous amount of confidential information. We use it because a lot of the other angel groups tend to use AngelSoft. We don’t use it to manage our deal flow. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Could you talk a little bit about venture firms in Florida?

Alan: For the venture firms that work in Florida, that invest in Florida, that means they may be domiciled in the state, but there are also others such as Intersouth,  Aurora, and Noro-Moseley that are not located in Florida but make it a point of actively seeking investments in Florida. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Those angels, are they all based in and around Jacksonville?

Alan: Generally so. I say generally because there are some outliers. We’ve got some people from Savannah, we’ve got some people in Tampa and that area, but generally, in the first two funds that we built we’ve been very heavily focused in the northeast Florida area, meaning Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach, Amelia Island, this neck of the woods. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Alan Rossiter, Vice Chairman, Springboard Capital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the thirteenth interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Alan Rossiter, vice chairman of Springboard Capital, an early-stage private equity fund in Jacksonville, Florida.

Irina: Hi, Alan. Could you please start with your own background?

Alan: In the recent past, I’ve been a private angel investor. Going back before that, I was a career naval officer, a Navy pilot for a number of years, and then I retired in the early 1990s. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Mike Maples, Founder And Managing Partner, Floodgate (Part 15)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What do you think the most important thing that angel-backed founders could do to increase their chances of success?

Mike: I would say do customer development in parallel with product development. >>>