It has been some weeks now we have all seen Ycombinator like model popping up through the United States.
None yet in Europe, the culture is different we all know.
While talking to different people around, i observed many are interested by a seed venture fund / school, call it as you want but no one is taking the lead.
I decided to experiment FROG VENTURE.

What it is?

It is an open seed project in order to concentrate all european efforts and create seed school around Europe.

I started by France but everyone is welcome. What can make it successful will probably be the network.

I started with a simple 4 pages website, if i observe traction i will allow everyone to share in a commun space and will see what happens.

So spread the word about that initiative.

We are the 1st of April, i think it is a good time to start. Google has shown us the way.
Thank you folks.

Here is a reproduction of a great wrap up about Angel investing on Felicis Ventures Blog from Angelconf: Worth a read if you wanna be an angel.

It’s very hard to distill insights gained on angel investing over a period of 3 years into a talk of just 7 minutes. So I thought it would help to re-summarize those lessons in writing. Here’s a pretty comprehensive list (though not exhaustive) of what I think is key to be a good angel investor:

• Pick a Goal - Picking a goal as an angel investor is important: decide if this activity is a hobby, philanthropy or the next professional step in your career. Maybe it’s one or all of those, but it affects the outcome and your investment style.
• Pick a Focus - Everything else being equal, investing in an area of expertise, based on a field of experience or knowledge is key in reducing the risk while increasing the chances of success. It also allows you to know your segment and your companies better than others.
• Be Social - Woody Allen once said that “90% of success is showing up”; the best foundation of angel investing is a solid personal network, which is ideally built one connection at a time. It’s also important to always be nice & helpful to the entrepreneurs as well as your co-investors, referrals produce often the best investments
• Be Transparent - It’s OK to pass on deals, in fact, it’s necessary to decline a lot more investments than proceeding with them. But doing so in a transparent, timely, helpful and polite way is very important.
• Be Different / Build a Brand - There is no shortage of capital, even in this economically challenged times we’re in. Putting in the extra effort and paying attention to details will pay off big over time. Building a strong personal brand is key to attract the best entrepreneurs and have them choose to work with you. It’s also key to creating a “proprietary deal-flow” which is the most important success factor in angel investing
• Understand and Pay Attention to Terms - At times this could be the difference between losing your investment and generating a positive outcome. While lawyers can help here, so can being part of a reputable, professional and good investment syndicate
• Use numbers to your advantage - having a portfolio of a reasonable size (larger than 10) is pretty essential in several ways:
  • it helps spread the risk
  • if you are helpful to your portfolio companies, their teams become your champions. The more companies and people speak positively on your behalf, the higher are your chances of discovering extraordinary founders and start-ups
• Have fun - Enjoying what you’re doing will reflect positively in your attitude. Working with founders you like on ideas that make a difference and seeing those companies grow can be extremely rewarding. Enthusiasm is contagious.
• Know that it’s not a picnic - A great portion (1/3 according to Ron Conway) of the companies in your portfolio is likely to fail; in fact it’s expected. Remember this is about making bold bets, and with those come often losses, and the pain of seeing companies close their doors. Tolerance for losses is a necessity not an option.
• Pattern recognition / Supply and Demand - Seeing a very high number of deals and having a portfolio is key in training your pattern recognition. Angel investing is not an exact science, it’s an art. The best way to perfect that art is exposure to as many data points as possible. Equally important is understanding that with most early stage investments, data is scarce and information is opaque. So valuation is often determined by the supply and demand. However, popularity of a deal is rarely correlated if an outcome is positive or not.
• Structure - If you’re doing angel investments professionally, structure might be important. Make sure to look into decent legal help regarding forming a legal entity to make the investments through (for liability reasons), or putting the investments in a retirement plan for future tax benefits. These details might not be obvious at the onset, but might become critical later on.

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Techcrunh released the news today here and the Twittersphere has RT the message at least hundred times.

What is the big deal?

Sequoia is the most famous VC firm on earth and Y Combinator has proved his model to be a successful one….why everyone is so surprised about it?I guess a lot of VC firms will join the bandwagon and i will not not be surprised to see TechStars annoucing the same kind of deal very soon.

Seedcamp wich is developing a quite similar model in Europe has been funding at start with 3 millions Euros by about 10 VCs to access  “premium dealflow” and “investment opportunity”.

I guess more and more entrepreneurs will play the angel as less money needs to be poured into companies these days and sweat equity is by far the key for a new entrepreneur.

Jean David Chamboredon from 3i has talked about this new model saying “successful entrepreneurs will be business angels of tomorrow”

We can interprete that Sequoia investment as a new trend for VC to outsource the early stage stage of development to small dedicated teams and focus on big deals only.

If Y Combinator has a great PR, it is not the case for all other small angel teams doing the same job and having difficulties to access a great audience. This is why we created CapitalBooster, we understood that new trend and wanted to be part of it.

If you are a Y Combinator copycat (i wish you are) and want to present yourself, feel free to contact us. We will be pleased to present your team and structure.

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These are some blurbs I made notes of from the AngelConf conference put on by Paul Graham.

Ron Conway
• “have to have a portfolio, to have hits”
• “it’s not fun; it’s hugely interesting to talk to entrepreneurs who literally in front of you are telling you the future”.

• “spend 25% of my time in philanthropy”
• Need to be very dedicated to angel investing.
• Don’t invest in someone you don’t really like; life is too short. Have personal chemistry.
• You have to have value to add; you won’t get into the great deals [they have allocation problems; you have to fight your way in].
• Be patient;
• I recommend investing in a bunch of companies. [he invests 50k-100k]
• 10k-25k to get your feet wet.
• 1/3 of them will go out of business. Failure is part of learning process.
• Pick a sector you like; I like sectors that are Internet and have massive growth. Invest in several companies in that sector.
• Great deal flow (respect for entrepreneurs to get the access) and due diligence = great portfolio.
• Build a referral network of entrepreneurs that you can invest in with, etc.
• Reputation is very important – screw 1 entrepreneur, you’re screwed.
• As lead angel, you need to take the entrepreneur to Sand Hill Road and you help them get funded.

if you want some more…

Thank to Steve Poland for that.

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