Our Response to SGEntrepreneurs
This is our response to the Bernard Leong blog post about Angels Den which, for some reason, hasn’t been approved and published.
Hi Bernard,
Many thanks for giving us the opportunity to respond.
Regarding your comment: “It is totally contrary to the spirit on how the entrepreneurial ecosystem should work.” One should note that there is a huge difference between what “should work” and what “does work”. It is important to detach yourself from a Utopian view of Angel Investment where every well-positioned Angel investor has a clear view of every start-up that is worth investing in. The Angel investment marketplace is an imperfect one – just like the dating one. Two individuals that are perfect for each other may never meet. Angels Den is a match maker with proven credentials that provides a route to funding for all types of entrepreneurs.
It is our role to invest our time and money in organising Angel investors and providing a platform for them to find their perfect investment, then in tandem to providing assistance, guiding and coaching to support the entrepreneur to become ‘investment-ready’ – from establishing their goals, creating a water-tight business plan, becoming pitch-ready, through to the legal complexities of an Angel investment agreement.
The figures you talk about are not purely for a three minute pitch, they cover the whole process from genesis to completion.
Furthermore, do you think the business Angels you talk about would entertain, without introduction or pre-screening ANY entrepreneur regardless of how pitch or investment ready they are? I applaud your enthusiasm, but feel it is misplaced. Just as your view that Google, Facebook and Twitter didn’t rely on an Angel investment network to find finding. These companies were in a very fortunate position due to their contacts – not every entrepreneur is fortunate to have those contacts and experience – that is where the Angels Den service comes into its own.
Angels Den brought a radical new model of Angel investing to the market place, which is still only two and a half years old. We made it accessible to the person-in-the-street. We do not vet companies looking for funding and we have no minimum funding requirement. We provide a straight-forward, transparent, cost-effective and fast service connecting entrepreneurs with potential investors.
A question recently has been “does Angels Den work?” Well we can categorically say YES! On a given SpeedFunding event on average 225 individual pitches are made, 90% of the entrepreneurs receive interest from at least one angel and occasionally entrepreneurs will gain interest from ten in one evening. How long would it take for an entrepreneur to meet 15 Angel Investors? If time is of the essence, surely its wise to invest in shortening the time significantly to raise necessary funding?
What is a constant in business is the fact that whenever a new organisation begins to revolutionise a market, turn it on its head, offers something different, something more; there are plenty of people willing to maintain the status quo. Angels Den offers every entrepreneur access to angel investment; surely that’s a good thing?
We would appreciate it if Bernard would publish our response to allow his visitors to appreciate what Bernard had written was an over-simplification and inaccurate portrayal of our offering.
