All Posts Tagged ‘Angel Investors’

Jennie White

Top 8 Boston Angels on Twitter

Jennie White | June 20th, 2010
Boston angel investors

Talk to Boston's angels on Twitter

There’s been a lot of angel investment talk recently in the wake of Jon Pierce‘s Angel Bootcamp, the Open Angel Forum, and a ton of blog posts talking about what Boston can do to get angel money flowing. Thanks to Twitter we can have discussions about angel investing directly with angels themselves; Boston has a bunch of angels who are doing their thing on Twitter.

In true BostInnovation style we’re counting down the top 8 angel twitterers in Boston. This time we didn’t take follower numbers into account; we looked at what these angels are tweeting about, how often they’re tweeting, and how engaged they are in Boston’s startup scene. The best part is, we picked a “sweet tweet” from each angel to show off their personality.

Let the countdown begin. (more…)

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Jennie White

It Turns Out There ARE Angel Investors In Boston

Jennie White | June 2nd, 2010
Boston's angel boot camp

Angel Boot Camp teaches us what Boston needs to improve to get more seed funding

A common complaint among Boston startupers is the lack of angel investors — high net worth individuals who invest in early-stage startups and are often entrepreneurs themselves. Angels give early-stage companies without venture capital funding a chance to survive the financially and exhausting first years of a startup.

Yesterday, at Angel Boot Camp the angel investment scene in Boston was somewhat demystified. Although Boston angels and entrepreneurs have a long way to go, it was encouraging to see an emergence of new angels and vocal support for them from veteran angels.

Angel Boot Camp was organized and hosted by Jon Pierce, founder of Betahouse, who’s also a founding member and trustee of The Awesome Foundation. A seasoned entrepreneur, Pierce has been a vocal advocate for angel investment in the Boston community. Held at Microsoft N.E.R.D, Angel Boot Camp brought in over 250 attendees and 20 speakers like angel, Bill Warner and Google Ventures partner, Rich Miner to teach entrepreneurs and perspective angels about the world of seed funding and what can be done to improve it here in Boston. Angel Boot Camp was also a time for angels to connect with one another, and gave first-time investors a chance to talk about joint funding. The entrepreneurs were not forgotten either. They had the opportunity of a lifetime — the chance to pitch to a room full of angels. (more…)

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Kyle Psaty

Daily Grommet’s Secret Angel Investor Revealed!

Kyle Psaty | April 16th, 2010
Daily Grommet Logo

Daily Grommet: A place where community counts

Due to the nature of our publication, BostInnovation’s staff is always impressed by a company that can really churn out high quality online content. Lexington-based Daily Grommet does just that, creating awesome videos each day to promote a new invention the site’s visitors have never heard of before. They then sell the featured item for a cut of the profits.

The company’s method of finding new goods involves what founder Jules Pieri calls “Citizen Commerce™” — They find many of the products they profile through recommendations from site visitors.

Apparently, the $3.4M round of funding Daily Grommet received this week has sort of a citizen slant to it also — one of the angel investors backing this round actually owns the company behind a product Daily Grommet has featured and sold. Apparently Mike Huebner, CEO of Atlanta-based Stuffitts, was so satisfied with his experience with Daily Grommet, he called out of the blue a few weeks ago to ask if he could help back the company financially.

“[Mike] was one of our suppliers,” said Pieri today. “He contacted us and mentioned that he’s an angel investor and his strategy is to only invest in companies where he is a customer — where he’s being treated the way anyone else would be treated. That was really exciting for me, because what we did for Stuffitts was nothing extraordinary. I think what we do is extrordinary, but there was nothing about what we did for him that was different from what we do any other day. That was exciting to have that validation.” (more…)

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Chase Garbarino

Dave McClure Keeps it Real on Boston Startup Panels

Chase Garbarino | March 11th, 2010

Dave McClure: A great leader for Boston founders

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hearing Dave McClure speak twice in Cambridge: First, at Dogpatch Labs, and later, at the MIT Stata Center. If you don’t know of Dave, he describes himself as “a sh***y coder in the ’80s, a crappy entrepreneur in the ’90s, a decent startup marketer, and a pretty good angel investor.”

If you were unable to attend either of the events, you can watch them at the bottom of this post in a pair of videos courtesy of our pals over at DartBoston.

If you are a softy when it comes to bad language and keepin’ it real, then Dave’s talks probably aren’t for you. After a year full of stodgy, white-haired, B.S. “networking” events here in the Bay State, I have to say hearing Dave mix in a few F-bombs with truly insightful “Web 2.0″ startup advice was a breath of fresh air. (more…)

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Chase Garbarino

A Response to Bill Warner’s Playbooks & Scorecards: We Need Weak Ties!

Chase Garbarino | January 27th, 2010
Bill Warner of Warner Research and TechStars Boston

Bill Warner of Warner Research and TechStars Boston

Bill Warner, a great entrepreneur and one of Massachusetts’ most valued startup mentors, recently wrote a pair of posts about how to encourage new behaviors to increase our success in developing and retaining high technology companies in the region. Mr. Warner suggests a scorecard as a way to establish a common vocabulary for talking about success.  For example, a grand slam would be a company with a market cap of $10B or greater – something clearly to be encouraged.  He also provides the beginnings of playbooks – one for companies and one for the region – that outline the behaviors to be encouraged for growing great tech companies and re-establishing the region to its tech leadership position. (more…)

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