How to get money from an angel?
Angelic character
5 habits of venture investors that you need to know in order to raise money from them for a startup.
Pavel Kulikov, Slon.ruIn Luc Besson's film "Angel-A", a stunning girl in a small black dress comes to the aid of a small conman who owes money to bandits.
According to the plot, she turns out to be an angel who descended from heaven. In order for Andre to pay off his debts, the girl gives herself to everyone in a nightclub, and thus earns the necessary amount for the unfortunate swindler.
This film suddenly came to my mind when I was listening to the speakers of the congress of the National Association of Business Angels of the Academy of National Economy. In theory, business angels are people from whom entrepreneurs ask for money for development. Angels come to startups to help when banks don't give money, and it's awkward to turn to venture funds – the volume of investments is too small and/or there are too many formalities.
However, with a certain similarity in the scenario of relations between business angels and entrepreneurs, the former differ from the Bessonian character: they do not wear short dresses - at best a suit or even a stretched T–shirt. And there are no altruists among them. Each of the speakers honestly warned money-hungry startups: if possible, it's better to borrow from friends. And if it doesn't work out in any way – be friends with the angels, but first study their habits. Slon.ru I tried to do it.
So, private investors...
They often make mistakes
Convince a business angel: if you don't give money, you will regret itBusiness angels miss opportunities at every turn, and then suffer.
Apaxys Ventures Partner and CEO Webinar.ru Alexander Alpern once advised a company that launched several successful games for Russian social networks. Now he worries about the fact that he did it for money, not for a share. For just 1% of this company, he would now receive $1 million.
Another business angel, Igor Panteleev, executive director of the "National Commonwealth of Business Angels "SBAR", blew the chance to invest in the production of precursors for hookah. He was at a venture fair in Tel Aviv, a startup approached him and asked: "Do you smoke hookah?" Panteleev was smoking, and the young entrepreneur showed him his development – packaged tobacco.
Usually a hookah is filled with tobacco, covered with foil on top, holes are pierced in it, charcoal is put on top and lit. The startup offered to immediately pack tobacco in perforated foil and sell it as tea bags. Blew – threw it away. It was proposed to produce in Germany: Arabs - hookah lovers – would not buy tobacco from Tel Aviv. After thinking about it, Panteleev refused.
Now tobacco bags are sold everywhere, and a business angel bites his elbows. He could receive 50% of the profits from this project.
Gather in packs
Find one angel and get to know the whole partyPrivate investors who want to tickle their nerves turn to business angel associations.
Luisa Alexandrova, chairman of the St. Petersburg network of angels, tells how a certain vice-president of the bank approached her and said: "I have 400,000 rubles that I want to invest in a startup." Alexandrova found a startup for him, who had nothing but an idea. The banker's money was spent on studying the history of patenting and making a prototype. The startup took off and is about to raise 150,000 rubles in the next round of financing - the banker helped him. Lesson: if you apply to the association, the chance of finding your banker is higher than in the market.
Investors stick together. When business angel Alexander Alpern launched his own startup Webinar.ru , he invested in it himself and found two more investors-acquaintances. "Then another partner was found – a few months before the crisis, he sold a stake in an Internet provider in Moscow," says Alpern. In general, business angels are a community. You find one – others are pulled up. In one of the projects, Alpern is going to attract six business angels who are ready to risk small amounts of money for them.
Marking the territory
Choose your angel by startup profileDmitry Morozov, director of Global Venture, has found an IT startup for his investors that deals with gesture recognition technology.
The angels invested 10 million rubles in it, and the project will receive another 25 million in the form of a grant from the Skolkovo Foundation. "We don't really care,– Morozov admits. – It can be a biotech, and resource conservation – we are ready to deal with the project." Of course, when Skolkovo gives almost $1 million, there is no difference, but mostly angels invest in industries in which they understand at least something.
Every business angel has his own ideas about which industry to invest money in. Moreover, these ideas are sometimes based on his personal principles. It's good to find just such an angel – a principled one.
For example, Neurok CEO Vadim Asadov invests only in Internet startups. Nikolay Badulin, CEO of the FiBr Management Company, on the contrary, invests anywhere, but not on the Internet. "IT specialists are blowing against the wind: they have spied a model in the west and are making it in Russia," Badulin is indignant. – That's why I have little faith in the IT business. I invest, for example, in the treatment of blood cancer with silver."
They do not forgive offenders
Don't offend the business angel - he remembers the nineties"I have been an entrepreneur since 1985 and have seen a lot in this life," said Konstantin Belyakov, a business angel and part–time deputy director of Elecard Devices.
And he added: "Both in the Soviet Union and in present-day Russia." The most unpleasant thing, according to him, happens when an investor and an entrepreneur do not sign papers before starting a partnership. They knocked on the hands, gave money, and then they figure out what they knocked about and whose profit. "Formulate the relationship in any format, even on a piece of paper," Belyakov strongly recommends.
Arguing with business angels is a thankless task. Unlike venture fund managers – adherents of Western business etiquette – angels are sometimes guided by concepts. Don't expect mercy. "I'm putting one entrepreneur in jail now for five and a half years," says Nikolay Badulin, CEO of the FiBr Management Company and business angel. – I have been financing this process for 2.5 years, and I will bring it to the end, because this comrade is immoral."
Russian laws are designed in such a way that an investor can be practically disenfranchised if he owns less than 50% of the company. So a business angel may have to defend himself in not particularly civilized ways if the rights are infringed. Moral: it is better to agree on everything at once.
They are hungry for super profits
Promise the angel a large market or high profitability"The volume of the market in which the company plays should be at least $200 million," Igor Panteleev, executive director of the National Commonwealth of Business Angels SBAR, said categorically.
"Otherwise I will never invest in it." As Guy Kawasaki writes in his book "Startups", at high tide all boats wash up on the shore. Kawasaki's business angels have read and love growing markets of hundreds of millions. And if the market is new, and the startup has no competitors, they hide money away – it is more difficult to form a market than to compete.
Another rule of Panteleev sounds like this: the invested funds in three to five years should return in five times the amount. If it is immediately clear that such profitability is impossible, Panteleev will not give money. "I'd rather invest in projects that are extremely profitable than take risks with low–margin ones," he says. That's probably why Internet startups are popular. Aircraft construction, pharmacology and other technological industries, where the product can be touched with your hands, do not promise such a return. At the same time, it takes years to test the product.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru22.04.2011