David Rose, founder of Angelsoft and the New York Angels, speaks of several recent announcements and makes one on the Show. Angelsoft has recently developed new relationships with the Angel Capital Association (ACA), the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) and the National Angel Capital Organization of Canada (NACO), basically sewing up all the major angel associations in North America. How did he accomplish all this? Or is it more like, "what took so long"? He has over 20,000 accredited investors in hundreds of angel groups using Angelsoft. Best of all, it's free.

Show #262 (31:13) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 at the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

Seattle's Alliance of Angels has had a single executive leading the group for its 11 year history, Dan Rosen. Yes, succession problems come to mind and it reminds me of Duwayne Peterson of the Pasadena Angels who eventually found a successor after many years at the helm, but having strong leadership in an angel group has got to correlate with good deals, good relationships with entrepreneurs and even better returns.

Contrast manager-led groups, like the AoA, Band of Angels, Common Angels, Hub Angels and the NY Angels, versus all-volunteer groups like the Tech Coast Angels: differences come to mind. The manager-led groups are funding more startups this year. As the economic turmoil of the past year has roiled early-stage funding, manager-led groups can react more quickly, implementing changes as necessary. At the NW Regional Angel Summit last February I learned that AoA had already changed their pre-money valuation criteria, only letting in entrepreneurs that complied with the new guidelines; and why wouldn't an entrepreneur listen when 2 out of 3 presenting companies got funded the prior year? Think of the consistency in due diligence, term sheets, co-investing with nearby angel groups and dealing with follow-on rounds; having a strong executive with long term experience would be a great asset for an angel group.

All-volunteer groups spread the responsibilities around, probably a good strategy for long term survival. The succession plan here in LA is now a single year as Chairman. That rotates a lot of talented members through the leadership, creating more angel ambassadors in the local community, but at what cost? A one-year term means there's very little time to learn on the job; by the time you go through a single cycle, say arranging the annual business plan competition at the local university, coordinating a Fast Pitch, setting a plan for the website, and the like, your time is up and out you go onto the blogosphere, at best. Self-imposed term limits come to mind and remember the argument against? That power would shift from elected officials in Congress to the Executive or, worse, the military. I don't know where the angel power has gone, but longer terms for leaders of all-volunteer angel groups would be a step in the right direction.

Bicycling with Inland Empire angel investor John Tillquist the day after Thanksgiving, see route, I asked him what issues he'll bring to the Tech Coast Angels' offsite planning meeting this week. Usually a better listener, let me confess I can't remember more of John's marketing concepts, but it did trigger a mad scribble on my part.

Let's take deal flow. Angel groups in smaller metropolitan areas, like the Desert Angels in Tucson and First Angel Network in Halifax, Nova Scotia see modest deal flow compared with the "drinking from a fire hose" mode, the hundreds of funding applications seen in LA, Seattle, Boston and New York City. There's a different approach in a smaller city with a smaller funnel. When a good deal comes along it's treated accordingly, lots of time can be spent grooming the entrepreneur and polishing the PowerPoints if you only meet quarterly. This more modest deal flow has its advantages: at the less frequent screening meetings these more polished deals may get a warmer reception, something that both the entrepreneur and the angels will appreciate.

In a major urban area like Orange County, CA, there's so many deals coming in through the web that sorting through them takes all the time the admin staff has before the startup finds itself in front of the angels at our biweekly screening meetings. As you can imagine, no one's had time to groom the entrepreneur or even look at his slides, so when he bombs out it can often be heard that "we're not seeing many good deals"; likewise the entrepreneur walks away feeling burned.

I propose we learn something from our small town peers, let's whittle down the funnel and only consider the very best deals we see in Southern California. If we only met once a month we could spend more time with the entrepreneurs and help them polish their pitch. We'd get a twofold return even before we fund them: our members would like what they see and the entrepreneurs would feel like we contributed to their eventual success. We won't fund this year, or probably next either, as many deals as we have in the boom years past, so why not trim the intake valves accordingly?

Chairman-elect Richard Sudek has sent each of the TCA board members a copy of Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese prior to our 2nd Annual Offsite Strategic Planning Session at Chapman University. Hopefully the message in the book will lessen the natural resistance to change that an offsite planning meeting is trying to counter. There are so many issues to address, especially since we're a 12-year old organization that's just lost its founder.

Why name this post after Cassandra, the beautiful daughter of Priam, King of Troy? Remember, Apollo gave her the gift of prophesy, accompanied by the curse that no one would listen. Such is the fate of a podcaster after interviewing 265 of the world's experts in angel investing. It's the same when we prognosticate on deals as when commenting on alternative approaches to angel investing in these turbulent economic times, like angel investors everywhere, my opinions are no more valid than any of my fellows'.

Richard has asked that each of us forward an issue worth reviewing with the group. Adopting Angesoft would have to be near the top of my short list, but I must recuse myself now that they're a sponsor of the show. Even so, we're planning to spend a small fortune on our own website in 2010. Is this good money after bad? It's hard for collegial angel investors to collectively admit that they're continuing to fund a startup that should be wound down; we're all such nice guys. It's equally hard for us to admit the money we've invested in our website, even though it has many custom built features that Angelsoft doesn't have, that it's time to throw in the towel. Like Reagan did to the Russians that led to the end of the Cold War and the break down of the Berlin Wall, we bankrupted them in the arms race. Maybe that Cheese book will get us over the hump. I've often thought: what if the TCA website were destroyed, our hosting company burned to the ground, how long would it take for us to find adequate alternatives to the precious features of our custom built website? I'll bet we could sign on to Angelsoft, abandon our legacy data like the Pasadena Angels did when they converted last year, find a calendaring tool to suit our needs and save a not-so-small fortune. But like I said, I really can't comment on adopting Angelsoft.

When it comes to syndication, even venture capital is rethinking venture capital deals. Momentum Venture Management's Andy Wilson describes the "siren song of big venture capital" and how his firm is rethinking syndication.

Momentum's process: they put money into the company and insert themselves as acting CEO. That keeps them busy, and Andy's quite candid about just what kind of year this has been.

Title this show: "business building, entrepreneurship and the crazy things we do." We both have good ideas of how to spend the holidays...

Show #261 (35:33) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

What's the difference between a wind-down or work-out and bankruptcy?

Philadelphia-based Rob Bovarnick knows and he shares that and more in today's show.

Fox Business, Forbes, he's an expert on bankruptcies and he's building an audience in traditional media. Will an appearance on the show open his eyes to podcasting? Or, more likely, I'll be learning something from Rob.

Show #260 (27:57) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

I was astonished to receive this somewhat threatening letter from this well known and highly respected Silicon Valley law firm. To me, as a journalist, the letter appears to limit my ability to conduct candid interviews and to report them. Since I am not an attorney, I would appreciate any suggestions from my readers and listeners in regard to this most amazing letter. How would you respond?

Notable commentary: TechCrunch, Why I Laugh by Chris Lindsey, Amateur Hour at James Hatch and Podcasting News.

Who would've thought Wilson Sonsini would threaten a blogger?

They're famously smart people who've contributed hugely to the success of Silicon Valley and the venture capital industry, so why would they kick sand in my face over a split-up at TweetPhoto? Read their complaint below.

Of course, the whole issue is a joke. How do you remove a podcast from the internet?

Whoever mwaters@wsgr.com is, he opened/forwarded my email announcement to 82 recipients, each of which could have downloaded the show. Doesn't he know? There's no getting the toothpaste back into the tube. Can you imagine? News of this development has my twitter account buzzing. Read their Cease & Desist for yourself then post a comment if you care to support my rights:

Re: Interview with Dan Caulfield Posted November 16, 2009

Dear Mr. Peters:

We represent TweetPhoto, Inc. ("TweetPhoto" or the "Company"). It has come to our attention that during the course of your recent interview with Dan Caulfield, Mr. Caulfield breached numerous continuing legal obligations that he has to TweetPhoto, including his obligations not to disclose the Company's confidential and proprietary information.Mr. Caulfield had access to, and was entrusted with, intimate knowledge of the Company's confidential and proprietary information, including, but not limited to, its financial information, fund raising efforts, customers, employees, business strategy, sales and marketing information, products, and other information pertaining to TweetPhoto, which is not publicly available. TweetPhoto considers such information to be highly confidential and proprietary.

Further, the interview posted on your website contains numerous factual inaccuracies and disparaging statements from Mr. Caulfield that TweetPhoto is concerned were made in an effort to harm the economic prospects of TweetPhoto and may constitute a violation of the laws prohibiting unfair competition, defamation, as well as tortious interference with contractual relations and prospective economic advantage.

The Company is concerned that the reproduction of your interview with Mr. Caulfield on your website will substantially damage TweetPhoto and TweetPhoto will not hesitate to enforce its rights against any person contributing to this damage. Accordingly, on behalf of TweetPhoto, we hereby demand that you immediately disable and remove any link, transcript or any other reproduction of your interview with Dan Caulfield from your website - http://thefrankpetersshow.com.

Please confirm your intentions by no later than November 18, 2009.

Please contact me immediately if you have any questions. All future correspondence and other communication regarding this matter should be directed to my attention.

Sincerely,

WILSON SONSINI GOODRICH & ROSATI
Professional Corporation

Daniel R. Koeppen
12235 El Camino Real, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92130
Phone | 858-350-2393
dkoeppen@wsgr.com

BANNED BY WILSON SONSINI

Photos for twitter? Sounds like a natural, so that's what former Tech Coast Angel Dan Caulfield has jumped into: TweetPhoto. Is it another case of "it's more fun to be an entrepreneur than an angel"? Well, not exactly, because now he's ex-CEO and there's trouble in paradise.

TweetPhoto works with TweetDeck, which is on my desktop already, so I tried it. Works great, and for a photographer like me, I can see myself tweet'ing out lots of my favorite shots.

So, if you're a former Tech Coast Angel, I'd assume you take your deal back to your friends, right? No, Dan has jumped in bed with LA-based Maverick Angels. "I was in a hurry," so he didn't mind paying to pitch.

Dan had a piece of the realtime web, now he's trying to buy out the founders.

Show #259 (23:41) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

At Luis' memorial celebration, Howard Miller is one of the first to speak.

Show #258 (08:56) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

Westlake Village based Maverick Angels announced today its alliance with Intesa SanPaolo Bank, Italy's largest bank and among the largest financial institutions in Europe to create a new angel investor network based in Milan. Read press release.

I hope Italian Angels for Growth Managing Director Marco Villa knows what he'll be dealing with. Listen to my interview with Maverick Angel founder John Dilts. Jason Calacanis has had a lot to say about Keiretsu and Maverick; can't wait to hear his take on this.

Wait... no fees to pitch? See comment from John Dilts.

This morning Marianne Hudson, Executive Director of Angel Capital Association announced a partnership with New York City based Angelsoft. As "official deal flow and collaboration software partner" to ACA, each member angel group will continue to enjoy free use of the software.

As part of the new relationship, ACA proposes the "creation of a Users Group to work with Angelsoft to standardize and improve the platform's features, processes, and protocols". Those ACA members wishing to participate in the new user group are invited to apply.

Read full text.

John Kensey's one of the original Tech Coast Angels and when I joined he volunteered to be my mentor.

Back in 2004 he was one of 3 partners who formed the Seraphim Sidecar Fund. Today it's fully invested and TCA talks about creating a new fund. John says he'll help and here he shares what he'd do differently next time.

The life of an angel fund is longer than any of us thought, and returns have been meager, but now there's news of an IPO...

Show #257(31:22) Listen

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8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan

August Capital's Andy Rappaport is the featured speaker at USC's Social Innovation Fast Pitch Wed Nov 11th at 4pm.

He calls it a fireside chat.

Andy, can you give us an idea of what you'll be sharing?

Show #256 (15:29) Listen

Growing from 20 to 100 members since 2003, EBAN must be doing something right!

The European Business Angel Network is the association for angel groups and early stage players in Europe. With all that interest in angel investing come certain challenges, too, like cross border syndication.

Join us as we take a trip through Europe's angel investing scene.

Show #255 (34:05) Listen

Save these dates
8 Dec 2009 the Puerto Rico Venture Forum in San Juan
15-16 April 2010 EBAN's 10th Annual Congress in Istanbul
5-7 May 2010 ACA's Annual Summit in San Francisco