techangels.ro

As I was saying in other posts, I think this industry of ours (IT, Internet, Software, Cloud, eCommerce – you name it) is one of the few that can help us improve our lives in Romania. It is an industry with great advantages, a clean industry, an international industry. It is an industry in which we (Romanians) know how to do a good job. In order to succeed in developing this industry as much as we can, I was saying here (my opinion), that a few things are necessary: opening the borders for smart people, remodeling some universities, local investment, the stock market, the desire of the authorities, entrepreneurs maturing, an association. Things have started to look better with the association – ANIS, and ever since Andrei Pitis became president it came back to life and it’s beginning to do things (congratulations, Andrei!).The authorities are not my area of expertise, and so I let others deal with this issue. What I do is I try to help with the other aspects mentioned: education (see the Journal of an Entrepreneur in High Schools project), bringing entrepreneurship to maturity (see Venture Connect), encouraging local investors (techangels.ro).

So, since we’re here, let’s talk about it: Bogdan Iordache (you know him from HowToWeb) has started a very interesting project and I’m honored to help him with it. The idea began from the following syllogisms:

• Startups need financing;
• The first money / efforts can be made from their own reserves;
• Over 200,000 Euros can be found relatively easily from investors that are more or less institutional (investment funds), in general not Romanian money;
• Small amounts, between 5,000 and 200,000 Euros are very hard to find;
• The natural solution is a community of “Angel Investors” to invest their personal money, either individually or in syndicated groups.

Different angle:

• Now startups are finding investors with non-Romanian money (most of these startups go abroad, to accelerators and incubators). As they grow, the shareholder structure will be increasingly made up of foreigners. So the profits will exit Romania;
• It’ll be much better for all of us if some of the internationally successful Romanian companies maintain a Romanian portion of their “equity”, money that can return in the system via subsequent investment in our industry;
• The solution thus is a community of “Angel Investors”.

Another perspective:

• (Thankfully) there are still many people with money in Romania. Either people with millions, or people who have a hundred thousand saved from their corporate jobs;
• They undoubtedly want to invest this money. The most obvious investments are in land or in companies that do something tangible (services – hotels, restaurants…);
• There are less obvious investments – like ours, in IT – which can bring much larger and nicer profits;
• The only problem I’ve seen is the difficulty in evaluating this kind of startup, as well as the obvious desire of such an investor to co-invest with someone who has done this before, in order for the former to be able to learn;
• The solution – again – is a community of “Angel Investors”.

Altogether, this is what techangels.ro does: it helps people with money invest in IT startups (software, internet, cloud, ecommerce…). It helps startups find the right money. It creates a community of Angel Investors that will ultimately help develop the industry. Are you in?

(English version by Teodora Popescu)