The Equation For Angel Investing Success
KEIRETSU’S KEY COMPONENTS
Keiretsu Forum’s angel investing members benefit from collaborative relationships with industry experts who participate via sponsorship or partnership. These organizations include professional services firms, colleges and universities, incubators, commercial real estate firms, investment banking institutions and other private investors in angel investment groups, venture capital firms and private equity funds.
These relationships facilitate quality deal flow — providing the capital, talent, technology, expert guidance and resources needed to access promising angel investment opportunities and build prosperous ventures.
However, it is not sufficient to merely provide the resources, expertise and exciting new investment opportunities. Keiretsu Forum is dedicated to mitigating the risk of investments as much as possible — from pre-screening and deal screening entrepreneurs before they are invited to present at a Forum meeting, to the extensive due diligence phase.
THE EIGHT-STEP PROCESS
- Application: Companies and entrepreneurs who are interested in securing angel funding through Keiretsu Forum fill out our online application.
- Pre-Screening: Applications are pre-screened by the appropriate committees, who select 8-12 companies to present at monthly Deal Screening meetings.
- Deal Screening: The Deal Screening presentations are 10-12 minutes long, followed by 8-10 minutes of Q&A followed by feedback. Three-to-five companies are typically chosen to present their investment opportunity at future monthly Forum Meetings.
- Presentations: At the Keiretsu Forum meeting, each company makes a 10-12-minute core presentation and then engages attending Forum members and accredited investor guests with 8-10 minutes of Q&A.
- Gold Sheet: After each entrepreneur presents, members and guests complete our online Gold Sheet which provides feedback and indicates investment and due diligence interest in the company.
- MindShare: After each presentation is concluded, entrepreneurs are excused and Forum members and guests discuss the company. This exchange of opinions is designed to open up investors’ eyes and minds to thoughts and ideas that had not occurred to them during the presentations.
- Due Diligence: The successful presenting companies are invited to enter into a comprehensive eight-week due diligence phase with the angel investing members who indicated interest on the Gold Sheet at the Keiretsu Forum meeting. It is common for one or two members to take the lead in due diligence. Any company that enters due diligence in the K4-MA-SE-TX Regions understand that we will negotiate a comprehensive Term Sheet and effectively lead their funding round. While the members collaborate in the due diligence process, each one makes individual investment decisions.
- Multi-Chapter Multi-Region Investing: After a company sparks interest from investors in the chapter closest to it geographically, it has the unique opportunity to present at other chapters of its choosing — broadening exposure to both expert advice and equity capital from Forum members. While members of each chapter or region may conduct their own due diligence, the vast majority of chapters in North America welcome the K4-MA-SE-TX work with open arms. This provides yet another collaborative, global-reach benefit of angel investing membership with Keiretsu Forum.