Angel investing to fund the best early stage investments chosen from all over the country.
Benefits
Quality deal flow from all over North America for our members everywhere.
Evaluation of potential investments by teams of experienced angel investors:
- Rating and commenting on startup applications by any member (on Gust)
- Screening to invite for pitching to all members
- Contributing insight during post-pitch discussions
- Executing due diligence by volunteers with interest and relevant expertise
This results in better investment opportunities among which individual members can decide whether they want to invest.
We leverage a wide variety of networks to generate quality deal flow and to find expertise to evaluate potential angel investments.
Upon exit from an investment sourced by Virtual Angels Network, members will reap the full proceeds without paying a 20% carry to anyone (nor past annual management fees on that investment).
Members can choose to have a voice in building the community of Virtual Angels Network.
How we do angel investing
Some members choose to attend virtual pitch events of other angel investor groups or virtual demo/graduation days of accelerators around the country and encourage the best startups to apply to Virtual Angels Network.
Entrepreneurs apply on the Gust platform, uploading their presentation deck, executive summary, and other documents for all our Virtual Angels Network members to look at whenever they want to.
Gust serves as a communication platform among all Virtual Angels Network members (and with the entrepreneurs when members choose to include them) throughout the process.
The Virtual Angels Network screening committee chooses 4 of the best applicants to invite to a virtual pitch event.
Pitch events are held totally virtually on Zoom. Each invited founder pitches, followed by a Q&A session with the members who are attending. After each founder’s time, after all the founders have left, the members have a discussion of each company, drawing on the expertise of the experienced angel investor members. For each company a decision is made whether to move forward into due diligence, depending on the number of members who are interested. One or two of the interested members are chosen as deal lead or co-leads. Pitch events are recorded, so that members who did not attend in real time can view the recording later.
Everyone who is interested in a given deal indicates their interest on Gust. The deal lead(s) schedule a one or two hour virtual meeting with the founder and invites all interested members. It is recorded so that members who did not attend in real time can view the recording later. The deal lead confirms with the interested members that they want to continue due diligence.
The deal lead continues to manage due diligence, which is executed by interested members. Results, documents and comments are posted on Gust for all interested members to see. The due diligence team leverages the expertise of the experienced angel investor members. Due diligence is executed as expeditiously as possible.
Each member makes their independent decision whether to invest in that deal. If a member chooses to, they invest directly with the company. Virtual Angels Network is not involved in nor responsible in any way for any investment.
From the Virtual Angels Network members who invest in a company, a lead investor is chosen (often the deal lead) to serve as a point of contact on a long term basis between the CEO and all Virtual Angels Network investors in that company. This is in addition to the expected communication from the CEO to all investors.
Virtual Angels Network Fee
We have two types of members. Both types are expected to contribute some (at least a little) time over the course of a year, volunteering at your convenience, to help Virtual Angels Network, e.g. doing one of the following: attending virtual meetings of other groups to source and invite the best companies to apply; rating and reviewing applicants; leading a due diligence team; or other Virtual Angels Network activities.
Please join us! Chose one of the memberships:
Supporting Membership – Non-Refundable Annual Fee of $300
You will have full access to all the information about companies from Virtual Angels Network Gust.com, and to all pitch events. You will have all of the benefits of membership. You must upgrade to Investing Membership within a month when appropriate (see description of Investing Membership below).
Investing Membership – Non-Refundable Annual Fee $900
For members who have invested in the past 12 months or will invest, in any company that pitched to Virtual Angels Network, listed on Gust.com, or was heard about from any of our members.
There are no fees, expenses or carry associated with the investments that each individual member chooses to make.
There is no initial investment nor minimum annual investment amount set by Virtual Angels Network.
Startups pay Virtual Angels Network no fee to apply, avoiding the adverse selection problem of groups who charge startups significant fees to present to their members.
Membership Requirements
At least a decade of experience
Accredited Investor status (self certification)
A LinkedIn profile (allows Virtual Angels Network to identify experience that may be relevant)