Author: Zack Miller

9 Tools Angel Investors Use to Track Potential Investments Online

Identifying potential investments isn’t easy. Startup investors — from angels to venture capitalists — spend lots of time developing systems to bubble up potential investment opportunities. This is frequently a junior analyst’s job: to screen, track, and identify ideas that are worth spending more time researching. Identifying a potential investment isn’t all about finding the right company — it’s also about timing. It happens frequently that companies may be too early for an investor. So, how do you continue to track a company until it’s fully baked? Here are a few of the tools angel investors use to identify and track potential investment opportunities. Startup Platforms OurCrowd: We know angels don’t have a lot of time to source their deals. We’re seeing at least 3 deals per day cross our desks and have a team of analyst scrubbing through them before we decide to make an investment. All that work is put into our due diligence before an opportunity appears on our website. On startup platforms like OurCrowd, investors get a smattering of different types of deals at different...

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What we’re hearing: Angel investing in Boston — with Richard Lucash

We recently posted about incredible opportunities we’re seeing to invest in Israeli startups, and it got us wondering what angel groups in other parts of the world have been seeing. To get some more color on the Boston tech scene, we went directly to the source. We had the chance to talk to Richard Lucash, a Boston-based attorney for emerging tech companies, about deal flow in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Richard co-founded the LaunchPad angel group and, with Jeff Stoler, recently launched a new angel group called SideCar Angels What’s deal flow like in Boston? In Boston, most angel group deals are syndicated.  The area is the national leader in doing angel syndications.  As part of this syndication effort, members of multiple groups may take part in due diligence.  SideCar is focusing on facilitating deals by filling out syndicated rounds. How do you generate deal flow? A large percentage of our deal flow comes from Boston area angel groups and micro VCs, however, often the companies approach us directly. What types of deals have you been seeing? We see...

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OurCrowd’s Jon Medved on Bloomberg TV, discusses investing in Start-up Nation

While on his latest tour to the US, OurCrowd CEO Jonathan Medved was interviewed live by Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line.” In the interview Jon discusses investing in Israeli startups and our innovative equity based, crowdfunding platform, OurCrowd. In addition, he responded to questions regarding the strong US-Israeli relations, China’s investments in Israel, Israel’s cyber-security and other various related...

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What Israeli entrepreneurs are working on now

After opening our doors last fall, we’ve gotten to know so many of you: thousands of investors, entrepreneurs, and partners. Particularly, we’re seeing an incredible number of really high-quality startups. A huge percentage of these are companies founded by serial entrepreneurs with differentiated technologies and real tractions (with serious users, customers, revenues, etc.). An incredibly high number fit our investment methodology and criteria. I thought it would be interesting to break down what our deal flow looks like (thanks to our resident geniuses, David S, David C, and Jeremy for pulling this data). What Israeli entrepreneurs are working on now So far, OurCrowd has seen: Total deals 175 deals since Jan 1, 2013 (100+ deals per month)  350 deals (received actual materials) since Nov 1, 2012 Maturity of deal flow deal flow has ranged from seed investments to Series C, with sweetspot in the Series A range Internationality of deals while the vast majority of our deal flow comes from Israel, we have looked at deals from 9 countries Sector breakdown of deals  We’re seeing the most activity in...

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OurLinks: What we’ve been reading this past week (February 25, 2013)

We read a heck of a lot of material during a work week. From deal flow to industry research, it’s important for us to stay on top of our game. Here’s a smattering of what crossed our desks (monitors) this past week. Hopefully, you can find a smattering of usefulness in these links. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Tel Aviv: 1 of the 10 cheapest stock markets in the world (Globes): “In 2011, in line with the global trend, the Israeli market fell. But internal and external forces last year resulted in only a partial correction in Israel, while all other markets enjoyed rising prices.” The n0-effort email to convert free users to paying customers (Unbounce): Sometimes it pays to have a senior leader reach out to prospects. Wading into dark pools (Barron’s): NYSE’s dark pool for small investors hasn’t been as disruptive as many feared. The new way we make web headlines now (The Awl): “Our actions are increasingly passive online, and we really are just looking for something to watch, click, share and receive.” How to view the entire free Kindle...

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