Business Angel Blog

There has been much discussion about what angels look for when investing and how to pitch. I hope my last couple of blogs have been useful in giving some guidance. It has also been some time since I talked about companies I had invested in.

Most of the cases I mention on my blog are businesses that I invested in and where they have failed. I think it might be useful to actually list the companies that I have invested in that are still active. For various reasons, (including some very good legal ones) I am not going to mention all of the companies! I should also add that nothing below should be read as me giving financial advice. Asking me what you should invest in is rather like asking Oprah how to maintain the same weight over a long period of time.

1. www.mydeco.com This is a company that is in a great vertical (furniture retailing) and has a management dream team with a great long term vision of where they want to be.

2. www.medicalfutures.com Medical devices can be really big money earners and can truly bring some huge benefits to many thousands of lives. The issue is one of how do you validate ideas when you have such little knowledge. This business seeks to create a pipeline of validated medical technology. Validated by the giants in the space. So it solves a real problem and it creates value for the shareholders. Best of all for me, it manages to carry out its core activities as a charity function. It raises a lot of money for a different charity. And yet this charity rationale is at the core of being a very smart business decision.

3. www.wooshii.com This is the first company that I have ever chaired and really got involved with. I like the problem it solves; how do companies find creatives to make compelling video/animation content for them without paying ridiculous agency prices? And how can freelance creatives from around the world get in contact with companies needing them? So it solves a problem and is in a rapidly growing market. On top of that, there is a management team that I really trust (having worked with Fergus – the CEO for over six years)

4. www.tribesports.com Again this company has a dream management team, is in a very exciting market with huge potential. I have known the CEO for several years now – so that really helps was well when looking to invest. What is particularly great about the management team is that you can sense they are constantly learning. They recognise patterns and look at examples in other industries of what has worked and why and vice versa.

I will mention another three companies in a future blog, but four other companies I cannot mention because they are now publicly traded (any mention of them in a positive way may be construed as an advertisement to buy shares in the companies) And another two companies should not be mentioned as they are in negotiations and any mention may be distracting.

A few weeks back I visited Poland for the first time and went to a place called Sczeczin. I was there to talk to a new Angel Forum that has been set up there and the strange thing was that this talk came about because of my Canadian connection. (So, I was an Indian Brit, representing Canada, in Poland).

I was reminded that my Canadian adventure started with a talk at an angel conference two years ago. So who knows what this may be the start of?

There were many interesting things and it was good to hear from local Polish Business Angels. They were talking about exactly the same issues that angels talk about everywhere I have been. They were worried about due diligence, documentation, valuation etc . So, whilst my last couple of blogs may have highlighted the differences between angels in terms of what they look for, it is also good to know that on the broad issues, we agree.

I also met an American from Honolulu who is now living in this very small but charming part of the world. It is refreshing to see how many people around the world end up in strange places just because they visited a place once and fell in love with it.

I am still utterly fascinated by how former communist countries have made the transition from command to free economies. Anyone under 30 in Poland will probably not realise the enormity of the change their country has been through. It was great to see how Poland has for the most part avoided interpreting economic freedom as gangster capitalism as other Eastern European countries have.

Much of the focus of the debate was about how Universities can commercialise their innovations and it remains a very interesting topic. ISIS (University of Oxford commercialisation arm) presented and it was brilliant to hear how a leader in a field does it. However, there are dangers from trying to implement a model that works for one of the (if not the) leading University in the World with over 800 years of history.

My advice to entrepreneurs and angels would be to travel a bit every year. But I don’t mean travel as in holiday. I really do mean that you should go and try and speak to people involved in your industry across borders (perhaps there is an internet based matching opportunity here?)

And to Poland I say Czan quia!