Angel Investors Are Out There But How Do You Find Them?
For many entrepreneurs, especially those in the technology sector, nothing inspires hope more than the two words, “angel investor.” As the name suggests, these are people who come, seemingly from the heavens itself, to give deserving companies a significant financial boost with a sudden infusion of funds. Throughout the decades, there are legendary stories within Silicon Valley of small, ambitious startups that rocket into the financial stratosphere because a much-needed angel investor stepped in at the right time with the money required to take a business to the next level.
It’s no wonder then that the interest in capturing the attention of angel investors is high. Just one angel investor with sufficient motivation can mean the difference between toiling in obscurity for years, and suddenly getting the resources required to win big. But angel investors are, by nature, not very common, and therefore may be difficult to find.
How Does Angel Investment Work?
An angel investor is, traditionally, a high net worth individual with interest in finding companies that are in their starting phases. By funding these companies early, this means that should the company succeed; the angel investor recoups a sizable amount of that investment as well as prestige from having the foresight to “back a winner” so early in the race before anyone else recognized that start up’s value.
Eventually, when a startup has sufficiently grown and is ready to move to the initial public offering stage and sell shares, that angel investor benefits greatly from being an early supporter of the company. In other words, angel investors are a bit like farmers, hoping to nurture promising companies and grow them to the point that they yield very profitable fruit.
Who Is An Angel Investor?
Angel investors, while they may occasionally work as groups, or even organizations, are largely high net worth individuals. They occupy a space between friends and family “chipping in” to help a business start, and the larger organizations such as venture capital investments, or banks. Angel investors will typically fund a sizable amount for a company, depending on the size, anywhere from $150,000 to over two million is in line with what angel investors have contributed.
The motivations of angel investors differ from one individual to the next. Some may be interested in investment for purely business reasons, looking only at startups that have the safest chance of providing a return on that investment. Others take more of a charitable approach, wishing to help businesses grow in a way that the angel investor would have appreciated when back in that same position. Some are interested in helping companies that want to advance industries in specific directions, such as sustainable farming, or advancements in solar power. Regardless of whether the angel investor is in it for profit or charity, there is still a hope that the business will succeed, not fail. There is an implicit understanding that every investment is a bit of gamble, with hopes for a payout.
The Challenge Of Finding Angel Investors
While there are many stories in the business world about angel investors swooping in with cash infusions to needy startups, that doesn’t mean that finding these investors is easy. On the one hand, certain names are public knowledge. For the biggest success stories, that appear in the headlines of the financial section of a major news outlet, for example, finding out who the angel investors may have been for prominent startup success stories is easy, since the names are a matter of public record in the news stories themselves.
However, that often still means some effort is required to track down the contact details relevant to such high profile angel investors. Perhaps more importantly, there are far more angel investors out there than the ones that repeatedly appear in major financial news stories, and appealing only to those well-known investors is taking the same obvious approach that thousands of other startups are also pursuing. Hundreds of startups trying to appeal to just one angel investor are going to result in hundreds of startups getting disappointed as only a few will succeed.
How Wall Street List Can Help
For businesses that are thinking of contacting angel investors for a startup company’s eventual IPO, there is a lot of time, effort, and research involved in just tracking down the right potential angel investors. Then, on top of that, even if a startup knows who to approach, even more effort must be put into formulating the kind of business plan and proposal that would convince those investors to fund a project.
Wall Street List can help remove some of the burdens from this search by eliminating the search itself. The company specializes in data accumulation and distribution, specifically for investors of all types, including high net worth individuals with an interest in angel investment. In other words, when you come to Wall Street List, you no longer have to search for a list of salient angel investors, because we’ve already done all the investigation, vetting and compiling, leaving you to only focus on putting your best efforts towards a convincing business proposal.
Let Us Make The Connection
If you are preparing for your first round of seed investment, we can help facilitate this process. Don’t spend precious time and investigative resources trying to scrounge up promising leads. Wall Street List already has fully vetted angel investor leads culled from a variety of different sources and verified for authenticity. Complete details, including name, contact details, occupation, and even liquidity or accreditation, are just a few of the data points that startups can use to hone business proposals and make sure they are properly targeted to the right angel investors.
If you’re looking for more than that just angel investors, we have comprehensive lists from a variety of different areas, including oil and gas investors, commercial real estate, and additional services for marketing, such as email broadcast and turnkey direct mail solutions for companies ready to begin aggressively marketing and promoting their products and services to their target market.