Cuts will increase the importance of business angels

Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement that the Business Department will bear the brunt of £6 billion cuts, could well signal difficult times to come for those businesses seeking regional development aid…

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Business angels – How do you know when the price is right?

Most start-ups can only dream of achieving rapid growth of this scale and generating profits of this magnitude for their business angel backers. The reality is that most start-ups will fall at either the first or second hurdle and the angel investors who backed them will be on the receiving end of an 80% failure rate when you look deeper into the stats.

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Where Business Angel Investors Fear to Tread

Investors in early stage and start-up businesses are known as angel investors. The tag ‘angel’ coming from their tendency to operate in the margins where venture capitalists, banks and other backers choose not to go.

They also help plug a major funding gap to get such ventures off the ground and they happen to be the kind of investors who are prepared to take a risk, rely on their instincts and invest large sums without too many hard questions asked.

At least this is the accepted view.

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Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs – A Match Made in Heaven?

More than half of business angel investments fail, but why? How much of this can be put down to the innate vulnerability of start-up businesses?

Surely having an enthusiastic angel investor on board, eager to provide a timely injection of funding to ensure success should mean failure rates i.e. those leaving the business angel out of pocket come exit time should statistically be on the better side of half.

Yet this clearly isn’t the case.

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Business Angels – What Would Warren Do?

Have you ever asked yourself what would Warren Buffett do if he were a Business Angel?
 
Well, it might be a bit hard to ask Mr Buffett along to attend our investments seminars, so instead we have attempted to summarise the rules Warren Buffett applies to his investments to see if we can apply that to [...]

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What are you investing in?

The biggest question for angel investors – and hardest to answer question – is ‘what am I actually investing in’?
However, if we ask the question another way, it does become easier.
If we take the approach that the task of the investor is first and foremost not to lose his money, then the first question that [...]

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What makes a successful Business Angel Investment?

56% of ventures invested in by angel investors will fail, according to recent research by Nesta..
However, as Nesta warns, the figure could be even higher as their statistical sample was taken from angel investors who have remained active over a number of years.
Therefore, the rate of failure could be as high as 80% , or to [...]

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