FINANCIAL
Angel Investing
Professional venture capital firms invest about $12 billion a year in helping start and develop business. Angel investors invest $60 billion a year. There are many types of angels. For example, DDF angels--doctors, dentists, and friends and family. Often these angels are benign for the entrepreneur because they won't as easily call the loan or ask for their money back. But they may have less to contribute to the venture in the form of helpful advice, information, and contacts. Their advantage is that they are handy, they often care about you and what you are trying to acheive, and they may not care too much about the return on their investment--or even the return of their investment.
Other angels appear in the form of succesful entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants, or anyone with extra cash and an inclination for high-risk investment. These angels can be entrepreneurs best bets because they really have been there and done that. Their business advice and contacts can be the difference between success and failure. Their down side is that some can get too interested in the business and meddle or their advice is not worth much if the business they ran was very different than the entrepreneur's business.
Most major cities have "bands of angels" or organized groups of venture investors which are managed or coordinated by a former entrepreneur, venture capitalist, lawyer, or accountant. These bands will generally invest from $20,000 to $2 million and often focus on startups. Their diligence will not generally take up as much of your time as a professional v.c firm in that their investment decisions are often more intuitive than analytical--they bet more on the entrepreneur and less on the product and market opportunity. These angels can be found by asking around your town for the name of those lawyers and accountants who specialize in new venture legal or accounting work or getting referred by local government entrepreneurial support agencies or successful local entrepreneurs. These bands of angels can provide more financial and other support to the entrepreneur and are often more professional. Professional venture capitalists will be more inclined to invest with these bands in later investment rounds. Many band members are themselves professional venture capitalists with their own VC firms who invest as angels for early access to good deals.
The VC industry began with little capital under management so the early VC tended to invest in startups which needed less capital. Now that professional VCs have considerable capital they tend to avoid startups, so angels and bands of angels fill the void.
NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENTS
Two different confidentiality agreements / non-disclosure agreements are offered, sold as a package.
1) External Contacts: This agreement is the one to use with contractors, vendors, consultants, potential employees, licensees and anyone else that will have access to your business. You can even have full-time employees sign this non-disclosure agreement, in addition to the employment contract.
2) Mutual Contacts: This is a "mutual" non-disclosure agreement, which stipulates that both parties (both you, and your contact) will not disclose proprietary information. This is used when talking to an "equal," like a potential partner, investor or even a competitor.
- protect your trade secrets, financial results and intellectual property from being revealed.
$29.99
