Perhaps the most common question I get asked is “How do I find an Angel Investor?”

Unfortunately they’re is no easy answer like…”Go to this site, sign up and voila, choose an Angel Investor…”

Actually – that’s not exactly accurate, there are two sites that come to mind – The Go Big Network and Funding Post - you should check them out…

I seem to recall some data from somewhere that the majority of Angel Investors invest with a 60 mile radius of where they live – perhaps its an urban myth but that sounds about right to me because, after all, many angels like to be close to their investments so they can get involved to some degree.

In my experience, Angel Investing tends to be on a regional rather than an national or international basis – take that into consideration before you stump up your hard earned cash to sign up to a broad brush internet service that promises to deliver handfuls of Angel Investors like an endless beauty parade – probably not going to happen unless you live in a few areas where they have high concentrations of angels…i.e. New York, San Francisco and perhaps Boston. And if you do live in such an place, why do you need to use a website service anyway – just go hang out at your local coffee roastery…

One point to make is Angel investors (or accredited investors) are defined as:

“a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person’s spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase;

a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year;”

For the full SEC Definition which includes all definitions – go here

…but one point I’d like to make is you can see from the two key definitions above that angels are not that rarified a set of individuals – you could actually be living next door to one right now or perhaps have spoken to a few over the last few weeks or months during some social event. That’s a critical point – in my not so humble opinion, one of the best ways to find an angel investor is literally through networking – so where would I hunt for angel investors?

[click to continue…]

{ 4 comments }