• Alan Hall
• Craig Earnshaw
• David Carter
• Gary Williams
• Hal Widlansky
• JD Gardner
• John Richards
• Kent Thomas
• Kyle Love
• Mark Madsen
• Martin Frey
• Nobu Mutaguchi
• Robert Kunz
• Scott Frazier
• Warren Osborn

If you are in Utah, the event is next Tuesday — make sure you register!

• Tuesday June 23rd
• 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
• Hilton Alpine Room, 255 S. West Temple, SLC, UT
• $25/seat, $200/table (includes lunch)
• www.investoroftheyear.org

Here are a few highlights of the presentation:

• 60 active angel investors surveyed
• The economy significantly affected angel investing as of November 2008
• Average number of angels/deal = 4.26
• 72% of investments had a pre-money valuation between $750k and $3M
• 85% of angel investments were less than $1M
• 55% of investments were in software/technology/SaaS deals
• 65% of investments were some type of preferred equity

Intrigued? Feel free to download the “State of Angel Investing in Utah” via PDF.  Please make appropriate attributions. 

DISCLAIMER:  This data is still very early in the process.  We are still collecting data and I am definitely not a statitician.

After receiving nominations, our organizing committee interviewed each of the nominees to find out responses to questions like:

• Tell us about how you got into angel investing?
• Tell us about your portfolio companies and investment history.
• What are your motivations for angel investing?
• etc.

As you can imagine, they have been some fascinating interviews!  Anyway, the committee has met and narrowed down the list to a group of finalists — which should be announced tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Oh yeah… one more thing.  For those of you in Utah, the can’t-miss award luncheon will be next Tuesday (June 23rd) at the Hilton in downtown SLC.   Click here to register.

• 93 Utah investors surveyed
• 49 investors said that they are still actively investing (52.69%)
• 2 investors said that they were syndicating deals, but not leading any new ones (2.15%)
• 21 investors said they are no longer investing (22.58%)
• 21 investors said that they are not making any investments outside their current portfolio (22.58%)

I have spoken to several people about this survey and have received drastically different responses.  One of the questions that I have is:  given the current state of the economy, are those statistics more optimistic or less optimistic that you had expected?

First of all, with the economy and all, I’m stoked to see any press releases hitting the wire of companies receiving angel investments.  However, I was very surprised to see TCA making an investment in what seems to be a high-end bike shop/storage station.  Don’t get me wrong — I love the concept, but it doesn’t fit into the typical angel investment mold.  Some of the questions that I have:  how large is the market?  What’s their sustainable competitive advantage?  Will they really be able to return 10x the investment?  How long will the station be relevant?  Hey, it could just be a nice PR play.

I think that it is brilliant PR by Bikestation to push such a strong green message — it’s such a hot trend right now that even NBA bball players are wearing their green initiative t-shirts.  In fact, I heard from an executive several weeks ago who told me that they tried raising investment capital for about 6 months without any luck whatsoever.  Almost hopeless and ready to give up, they decided to go back to the drawing board and re-brand the company to be green.  2 months later, they again hit the funding trail and the reception was completely different and — you guessed it — they raised a few million.

I may not completely understand the investment, but I give props to the team at Bikestation and wish them the best of luck.

So… the question I know have is… have you (or anybody you know) unlocked an iPhone to use on the T-Mobile network?  If so, could you please tell me the risks of doing that?  Or even better… convince me why I shouldn’t?

Thanks for your help in advance!

When I found out that my contract was coming to an end, I was debating whether to switch to At&t so that I could get the iPhone or stay on T-mobile and get Google’s new phone — the G1 (I’ve had the Blackberry Pearl for several years).  I decided that it would be worth it to wait for the release of the G1 to see what kind of reviews the phone gets compared to the iPhone.

When the phone was finally released, I was really surprised disappointed.  The phone has received mixed reviews (by experts and normal users) and pales in comparison to Apple’s sleek & sexy iPhone.  Personally, I haven’t ever heard anyone speak highly or recommend getting a G1 — the release was almost anticlimactic.  After looking at both carefully, the bulkiness of the G1 put me over the edge and I’ve decided to pick up an iPhone.

At the end of the day, I guess that I’m disappointed with Google’s first attempt at a phone.  Google does so many things well (email, calendaring, search, photos, groups, etc.) and I am an avid user of most of their applications.  Because I love their user experiences and their easy-to-use software programs, I had high/unmet expectations for the phone.

That being said, the functionality of the G1 appears to be fairly impressive… maybe Google ought to hire a few creative designers from Apple?!

• Steps to Funding
• The Art of Negotiation
• Young CEO’s
• Managing a Small Business
• Internet Marketing
• Valuation
• Term sheets
• and more…

For more information and to register, go to www.gewutah.com.

In addition to the Summit, we’re hosting another LivePitch event for entrepreneurs, service providers, angels, students etc. and this time we’ll be venturing up north to Logan!

Some of you might be asking… what is Social Media?  I’m no social media expert, but I’m referring to the following platforms:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Company Blog
• iPhone & Facebook Applications

“To keep up the current pace of investment and incubation, and capitalize on current low valuations and low operating costs for funding startups, now is a good time to raise an early stage fund,” says Monster. “In 24 months, many of the companies we back today will be ripe for harvest.”

I agree that now is a great time to raise an early-stage venture capital fund.  However, when I say “early-stage,” I’m not saying investments of $3-$5M, I’m saying investments of $750k-$3M.  Here are a few reasons why:

1. It is widely known that there is a funding gap above the traditional angel investment ($300-$750k) and below the traditional VC investment ($3M+).
2. Most of the current VCs can’t play in that space because their investment fund is just too large.  For example, if they have a $100M fund, it wouldn’t make sense to do 100 investments at $1M each because it would just be too hard for them to manage all of those portfolio companies.
3. Most of the current VCs move up the food chain (into the larger investments) bc their management fee (salary amount) is usually getting a management fee of a certain percentage of the fund size.  So, if their fund size is $100M and their mgt. fee is 2%, then they have $2M for salaries, office space, etc.  But, if their fund size is $200M, then they have $4M for salaries, office space, etc!  Make sense?
4. As Rob has mentioned, with the advancements of technology, it doesn’t require as much capital to start and grow a company as it used it.
5. And finally, there are A LOT of very good opportunities in that investment stage.

I realize that there are a few aspects that detract from investing early-stage — one of them being the fact that the deals are, well, early-stage.  That often means that the deals are higher-risk because the company has yet to attract significant traction and/or revenue.  That being said, I think that the market is under-served and the opportunity is large.

Who’s ready to raise an early-stage fund with me?