Definition of Angels
While corporations and professional venture capital firms are easy to identify, angels are more elusive. Most entrepreneurs don’t get their initial round of financing from someone like Paul Allen. In fact, after the credit cards are maxed out, the first stop is almost always friends and family. Does that make Uncle Harry an angel? It sure does.

As they are now defined, angels include relatives, groups of friends, notoriously successful former entrepreneurs, and organized groups of individuals with admission criteria, business plan submission rules and stages of due diligence. And as the definition grows broader, tracking these investors with any kind of reliability is increasingly difficult. Angels and angel groups are spread throughout the country, and often operate behind the scenes to promote local entrepreneurship. Further complicating things are regional idiosyncrasies.

Angels, for our purpose, are those high net worth individuals (Accredited Investors) that make equity investments in early stage companies. This maybe a passive or active investment. Active investment may mean a role in management (Advisor or Board Member), bringing in the next round of capital, help in establishing strategic alliances, etc. Personal funds can be placed in to the early stage company at levels from $50,000 to $250,000. This is typically ’seed’ money and before any Venture Capital investors.

The Need
Entrepreneurs are going outside the Region for seed capital because they don’t know how to connect with the ’seed money’ in this area. This Region has a huge number of high net worth individuals that could be making investments in these companies but don’t feel comfortable with it or don’t know how to find and/or qualify the opportunity and they miss out on the OPPORTUNITY and REWARD.

The Benefit
The Great Lakes Angels can be a forum for angels to network, grow in knowledge and wealth and foster more of the same - to help invest in entrepreneurial companies in the Region. Exposure can be made to Life Science, IT, MEMS, advanced manufacturing and various other technologies and with experts to aid in due diligence forth decision process and in support of the MEDC initiatives.

An example of a ‘low tech’ Angel investment from a San Francisco Angel group is a $1.4 million investment in Earth’s Best, an organic baby food manufacturer in Boulder, Colorado which was later acquired by H.J. Heinz Company, bringing investors an internal rate of return of 56%.

Meetings
The Great Lakes Angels organization is expected to hold 10 monthly events each year at regularly scheduled times and locations. The meetings are not open to the public and are by invitation only. The typical meeting will include two highly screened “deals” in the early evening (about 2 hours) with time for questions and answers to each presenter. There will also be a general discussion of the deals and an opportunity to indicate if you would like to learn more about the deal as a possible investment. The meetings include time for networking and establishing common investment interests during a cocktail break. Membership is not to be divulged publicly.