The 2017 Angel Capital Association Summit surpassed all my expectations! I attended the conference along with 9 other amazing women investment committee members of Next Wave Ventures, as well as 2 of my co-authors of Impact with Wings. There was no shortage of inspiration – both in terms of wisdom of experiences shared and innovation being driven.
Women. What was most amazing at the ACA is the gender balance of the event and the support I felt from all the men and women in the room. I felt I was in the presence of many great mentors and colleagues. Contrast this with many other Silicon Valley accelerator events, it was really night and day. If you did not know the stats of the industry – attending the Summit, you might think entrepreneurship and seed stage investing must be quite gender balanced. This, itself, was no doubt the hard work of many women and men of the ACA – for showing up, leaning in, and reaching out. To all those women and men, I salute you for really a fantastic job well done that paves the way for so many of us.
Ladies, write that check! – Trish Costello, Founder of Portfolia
Impact investing.
7am Impact Investing breakfast – full house both days with total 70 attendees! It’s inspiring to see such support amongst angel investors in learning more about social impact. One investor noted,
Best way to change the world is to have a company. – Riku Asikainen
Historically, as a social impact investor, I felt like I had to attend SoCap to be amongst my tribe. But today, at the ACA, it certainly signals impact investing becoming mainstream. To imagine what our future would look like, if all investing paradigm included social impact. Freda Kapor, so instinctively commented about her investment thesis and creating impact:
We are not sacrificing anything, we are just finding companies that are solving real problems. – Freda Kapor
Capital model to be aligned with the business strategy. Model company’s capital model. This is important to not only mitigate capital risk, but also determine if the current type of securities being issued or ways the company is being financed is the right one. We do this typically as part of the due diligence process, but it was extremely insightful to hear of how angels and VC thoughts around this subject. Especially given how early stage the investments tend to be, this assessment actually helps gauge how the entrepreneur thinks about his or her company, and its relationship with its investors. Sales projection reveals the company’s relationship with its customers, capital projections reveals its relationship with its investor.
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