Many thanks,

Dr. Tom Cotter

As i mentioned in an old post before, Angelsoft is a New York based company which has become an online ecosystem where investors and entrepreneurs meet to build new companies. Due to its name, Angelsoft was abou…

That said, I think a blind submission to the network, without anyone championing a company, would be pretty unlikely to garner investment. Angels rely a lot on their personal networks, and need to be able to personally evaluate the key people involved in a company.

I have looked into a couple of deals outside my home turf which i saw posted in angelsoft, but it is just hard for me to imagine getting involved with a deal where neither I nor anyone i trust has actually met and personally evaluated the prospect.

The times are tough, and even if you need to pay out $250 to do it, the opportunity is there for those that may not have an opportunity.

Personally, even though we have some interest already, we’ll probably still give AngelSoft a try in the coming weeks. Why have just one or two interested people, when you can have more? The more you have, the better investment deal that you can get. And frankly that’s all it is about, giving your business the best chance it can at succeeding.

(and no, I am not from AngelSoft, or even know anyone there)

The only thing we charge for is if you want to post your business plan to the global Investor Community and make it available to all 14,852 investors at the same time…and that’s only $250 for 30 days, which is far and away the most cost effective method that exists—anywhere.

Unlike all of the ‘matching’ or ‘marketing’ web sites that make great claims of getting you funded, Angelsoft is the tool used by real investors to manage their deal flow. With close to 15,000 accredited investors on the platform, Angelsoft has become the near-universal standard for the early stage world, so posting a plan to the Angelsoft Investor Community is certainly giving yourself the best shot at getting funded.

However, it is crucial to understand that it is very, very tough to find an angel investment no matter what you do or how you do it. We publish live statistics from the system, at http://www.ange...ft.net/industry, which show that this past year, 1.32% of applications received funding through Angelsoft. Given that this is actually *higher* than the industry average (and several times higher than the odds of getting venture capital funding), one can see that it is a very competitive market.

About six months ago we wrote a blog post discussing what companies can expect from an Angelsoft posting. Although these figures are slightly out of date because of the growing number of investors on the system (we’ll have updated averages shortly), here’s what we said:

“Right now submissions with a video average 22 views. That is 22 serious investors, likely from multiple groups, who are reading through your application to see if they are interested…submissions without a video average 13 views per deal, which is a 70% decreases from deals with videos.

21% of submissions to the Investor Community receive at least 1 referral into an Angel Group for further funding consideration.”

Because there are so many entrepreneurs seeking financing, angels have many options from which to choose, and all the stars need to align for a funding to come together. That generally means a great entrepreneur, a growing market, a brilliant business concept, a track record of successful execution, a solid management team, a finished (or close to it) product, traction with customers, cash already invested by the entrepreneur and his/her friends and family, and a spot-on presentation (through application, summary, video and business plan) of the opportunity.

Even with all of those pieces together, however, it’s still tough in the current economy to stand out as the 1 in 100 venture that eventually receives funding. As an entrepreneur and an angel myself, having founded six companies and funded 70+, I wish it were easier, but just because it isn’t what we want to hear, doesn’t mean it’s not true.