TechAngels

A very nice thing has happened lately – a group of Angel Investors have formed in Romania: techangels.ro.

Where is this idea coming from: – startups need capital at various stages / phases:

• Start – several thousand euro, their own money, to build a minimum plan/product;
• Seed – several tens of thousands, usually from an Angel Investor, for product completion and for starting sales;
• A Round – several million euro, from Venture Capital, to reach the point in which sales equal costs;
• B Round – from Private Equity, growth and maturity round.

Well, what was missing around here, in our part of the world, was the connection with Angel Investors – this is what techangels solves, in a way similar to angellist.

There are investors willing to put money in technology. A lot of them. There are people who’ve gathered knowledge about the tech business and who’ve made some money. And they’re willing to put this combination to work, offering money as an investment and helping companies in several ways. Not a lot of money is needed for this –10,000 euro is a good start. But you should afford to lose that money. A colleague told me off because, he said, 10,000 euro isn’t enough for an investment… It’s true, but that’s just the idea with TechAngels – if a nice project comes along, 5 investors can syndicate (put money together), 10K each, and a 50K investment is just perfect.
Where are these people with money? Are they “for real”? Ooooh… yes! There are many people who have money in this country. I’m not talking here about the names mentioned all the time on TV, but about the many who are not on TV:

• The people who made money from the real estate business before 2008 have money now and are trying to shift the focus. Technology is an extremely promising business, but it scares them because they don’t know the details. They would invest any time together with another investor who knows how things work. The same goes for athletes or people from other industries;
• Managers who’ve spent years in senior positions in tech multinationals. They’ve made some money and most of all they’ve gathered important knowledge about how this business works. It goes especially if you manage to bring them as investors in a business close to what they used to work in;
• Entrepreneurs who’ve already had a successful tech business and have either made money from dividends or they’ve sold the business;
• Foreign investors who want to access investments in Romania.

The problem is that you – as an entrepreneur – can’t really find these people on your own and especially you can’t put them in the same room together. Just as, for the investor, it’s not the easiest thing to find the perfect investment.

Well, that’s what TechAngels does:

• It gathers investors from the categories mentioned above (and generally anyone who has at least 10K to invest in tech). It gives them predigested investment opportunities and opportunities to syndicate with other investors;
• It gathers startups or companies seeking investment from Angel Investors in general. It gives them visibility and access to investors who would be hard to reach otherwise.

There are already quite a few investors in this “club” and a few investments have already been made – everything seems to go in the right direction, though this is still at the beginning.

As I said – this is great stuff.

(English version by Teodora Popescu)