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Should You Start an Angel Network?

1 min read Should You Start an Angel Network? Before making that decision, there are several questions you will need to ask yourself. Before launching an angel network, assess your community as follows: Do you have accredited investors interested in startup investing? Do you have any investors who will take the lead on diligence and investing for each deal? Do you or do you have a champion who will organize and lead the angel group for the first two to three years? Do you have a flow of startups seeking funding that you can access? Is there a resource for incubating and educating those startups in the area? Are there local service providers such as attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, and others who can support the startups? Are there other investor groups in your community that currently fund those deals to support syndication? Is there access to follow-on funding for startups? Research your community to see what currently exists and what must be built. Check with the local entrepreneur groups to assess and get their potential support for starting an angel group.   Read More TEN Capital Education Here Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Why Should Angels Join More Than One Network?

2min read Why Should Angels Join More Than One Network? Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals who want to invest in startups. This is often a part of a diversified investment strategy. Angel investors should join an angel group to maximize their returns on investments. The process of investing in startups is time-consuming and often challenging. Angel investors can overcome this challenge by joining angel groups. Angels join angel groups for the following reasons: Share the deal flow Share the due-diligence work Reduce the amount of investment required to participate  Engage better startups  Access investment tools, resources, and experience Negotiate better terms Build a brand  Promote a cause Angels join angel groups and networks to share the deal flow. The more investors in the group, the more deal flow is generated. Diligence requires expertise, research, and analysis. By joining an angel group, investors can benefit from the collective due diligence process, which can help them make more informed decisions about potential investments. An individual angel investor can invest small amounts through an angel network as the collective funding of the group meets the startup’s minimum requirements. This lets the angel investor fund more startups. The more investors in the group, the more attractive that group is to a prospective startup. Angel groups can provide investors access to a network of experienced entrepreneurs and other investors who can provide valuable advice and guidance. By pooling their members, angel groups have more access to experience and better investment tools and resources. The network leverages the collective knowledge and experience of the group. The larger the group, the greater the funding can be applied to a startup. This attracts better startups who may have their ‘pick of the litter’ among investors. Size also helps negotiate better terms with the startup as their check size weighs in on the negotiations of the terms. An angel group can build a brand that attracts more investors and more startups, whereas individual angels may not have a brand. Finally, an angel group can foster a collective cause, such as providing a better education experience for university students. This is the primary reason university angel networks exist. Angels should join more than one angel network.  Here are the reasons why: Access to a more significant number of deals Exposure to a wider variety of deals Engagement with more investor types and experience Access to new sectors and applications Increased network reach Joining multiple angel networks provides a greater variety of deals as most angel groups are siloed into specific geographic or sector niches. Additional angel groups provide access to other angel investors’ experience through their questions, diligence, and follow-up work. Join other angel networks to learn how to invest in different sectors and applications. Increase the angel member’s network reach by joining other groups. Consider joining additional angel networks to find new investment opportunities and networking connections.   Read More TEN Capital Education Here Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Why Should Angels Join More Than One Network?

2min read Why Should Angels Join More Than One Network? Angel investors are high-net-worth individuals who want to invest in startups. This is often a part of a diversified investment strategy. Angel investors should join an angel group to maximize their returns on investments. The process of investing in startups is time-consuming and often challenging. Angel investors can overcome this challenge by joining angel groups. Angels join angel groups for the following reasons: Share the deal flow Share the due-diligence work Reduce the amount of investment required to participate  Engage better startups  Access investment tools, resources, and experience Negotiate better terms Build a brand  Promote a cause Angels join angel groups and networks to share the deal flow. The more investors in the group, the more deal flow is generated. Diligence requires expertise, research, and analysis. By joining an angel group, investors can benefit from the collective due diligence process, which can help them make more informed decisions about potential investments. An individual angel investor can invest small amounts through an angel network as the collective funding of the group meets the startup’s minimum requirements. This lets the angel investor fund more startups. The more investors in the group, the more attractive that group is to a prospective startup. Angel groups can provide investors access to a network of experienced entrepreneurs and other investors who can provide valuable advice and guidance. By pooling their members, angel groups have more access to experience and better investment tools and resources. The network leverages the collective knowledge and experience of the group. The larger the group, the greater the funding can be applied to a startup. This attracts better startups who may have their ‘pick of the litter’ among investors. Size also helps negotiate better terms with the startup as their check size weighs in on the negotiations of the terms. An angel group can build a brand that attracts more investors and more startups, whereas individual angels may not have a brand. Finally, an angel group can foster a collective cause, such as providing a better education experience for university students. This is the primary reason university angel networks exist. Angels should join more than one angel network.  Here are the reasons why: Access to a more significant number of deals Exposure to a wider variety of deals Engagement with more investor types and experience Access to new sectors and applications Increased network reach Joining multiple angel networks provides a greater variety of deals as most angel groups are siloed into specific geographic or sector niches. Additional angel groups provide access to other angel investors’ experience through their questions, diligence, and follow-up work. Join other angel networks to learn how to invest in different sectors and applications. Increase the angel member’s network reach by joining other groups. Consider joining additional angel networks to find new investment opportunities and networking connections.   Read More TEN Capital Education Here Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

COVID-19 Impact on the Cybersecurity Space

3 min read What do investors see as the COVID-19 Impact on the Cybersecurity Space? The fact that COVID has impacted nearly every aspect of our daily lives is not new information. The way we live, connect, work, and play has been directly impacted. As our lives moved online, the web evolved and adapted to our increasing dependence on it. This led to increased vulnerabilities and therefore increased attacks on personal and corporate information. The cybersecurity sector has been adapting to keep up. In doing so, players in the space have gained new insight on more efficient ways to move forward. COVID-19 Impact During the last year of lockdown, working from home has left the workforce more vulnerable to malicious attacks and created specific challenges in the cybersecurity space. Employees are using their own devices to log into networks, exposing themselves and their personal information more now than ever. Corporate IP is suddenly at risk of invasion, and as a result, there’s new funding, and therefore solutions, aimed at those particular issues. People have become increasingly comfortable working remotely, putting a huge amount of pressure on the IT environment to decentralize. At the same time, in America alone, 300,000 jobs in cybersecurity are currently unfilled. There aren’t enough skilled workers to fill the industry’s current needs. In the next 12 months to 18 months, we will likely see a boom in the space as people recognize this trend, take the time to get the required education, and fill the need. We’ll start seeing more opportunities for the cybersecurity space. We will likely see many of the technologies that depended on the old environment struggle to keep up in the new remote world, leading to consolidation within the industry. Privacy Needs We’re seeing a trend around privacy in cyberspace as people now recognize their data is being used (and misused) overall, and they’re not getting compensated for it. At the same time, the amount of information leaks is increasing exponentially, leading to corporations and individuals demanding better privacy protection. Ten years ago, everything was centralized; employees were in offices and accessing the corporate network through a VPN. COVID flipped this scenario on its head, and now people are not only working remotely but from a variety of places, each with their own unique internet connections. They’re using personal devices, not always their own, that have systems that might be calling out to nefarious servers. The exposure to the opportunity for hackers to take advantage is now rampant, and the understanding of the corporate environment is more confused than ever as they’ve lost some control and understanding of their own systems. Back to Basics The cybersecurity space has experienced a resurgence of “back to the basics”. The industry has been around for about twenty years, but there has been a massive explosion in investment, major acquisitions, and new companies in the last five years. One of the patterns presenting itself in all of this is that we’re going back to a lot of the basics that a good security program is built on. Questions like “Before I think about securing my stuff, where is all of my stuff?” and “What are all the accounts that we have?” or “Where are all of our servers? Our data centers? Our users?” are now back at the forefront. Due to this reverted mindset, more companies focus on fundamentals such as asset management and attack surface, leading to specialization. We’re starting to see more security companies avoiding solving all of the issues, instead simply wanting to make the user more efficient at X or to increase efficiency in generating returns to the user rather than completely claiming to protect the customer from the user cataclysmic breach. Read more in the TEN Capital eGuide: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/investor-perspectives-on-the-cybersecurity/. Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Five Steps to Identifying Market Validation

2 min read Five Steps to Identifying Market Validation (and the one key criteria that counts). Angel investors look for market validation in a startup before investing. Fundamentally, this means that the entrepreneur has found a market with a need. But how to validate a market segment? There are 5 key criteria that Investors will look for, and one key that provides the “acid test”, indicating you have found one. Identify the Target Market Write out a specific definition of your target market segment and how it fits in the overall market. Set up a list of objectives you want to learn from the research. Build the Question Set Using an online or email survey to ask no more than five questions. In an interview, up to ten questions capture a good amount of information. Match each question to your objectives. Test the Question Set Send the question set to five friends. Ask them to fill it out and then give you feedback on the wording. You can also check their responses to see if it addresses your question. Roll up the responses and see if the results answer your objectives. Conduct the Interviews/Surveys In an email survey, you will receive most of the responses you’re going to get in about 2 to 3 days. After that, the responses drop off dramatically. In the survey, you may want to ask if you can contact them for further questioning. This may give you additional contacts to interview. Analyze the Data Review the raw data yourself. It’s surprising how often the same set of data can generate completely different results from different reviewers. While surveys and interviews can help validate the market, the one criteria that counts more than anything else is: “Will the customer buy the product/service?” Generating revenue, even at a small scale, says a great deal about your market’s need for the product. This is important because when investors review deals, one of the first questions that come up is “Do they have revenue?” If the answer is “yes” then you’re in the “to be considered” category. Read more from the TEN Capital Network: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/education/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Investing in Cybersecurity

3 min read Investing in Cybersecurity Cybersecurity resulted from the expanded exposure of people’s critical information on the web, including personal data, identifiable information, healthcare information, and more. The industry is horizontal, crossing many other industries such as energy, consumer products, government services, media, and more. Cybersecurity is central to the functioning of these sectors, as well as our economy as a whole. There has been a significant increase in the “bad side” of cybersecurity. Whereas cyberattacks may have referred to petty theft, we now see massive attacks on both personal and national levels. Economically, there’s an entire industry on the wrong side which creates an explosive industry on the good side. The minute a cybersecurity capability that can block hackers’ tactics is found, the bad guys figure out a way around it, creating a continuous lifecycle for the cybersecurity industry. Why Cybersecurity? Unfortunately, there is a lot of cyber-crime happening. You can’t help but pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and hear about another breach, another ransomware attack, or something else to be afraid of. And you only hear about the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot of issues at work, and there are several different solutions. The growth in cybersecurity is an asset class, and from an investor’s perspective, everything is on the table. From traditional venture capital investments to early-stage seed investing, late-stage pre-IPO growth, and even buyouts, there is a full spectrum of investment opportunities in the cybersecurity space at this time. What Makes a Company Successful? What makes a successful cybersecurity company is the same as in any other sector- good timing, a strong team, the right technologies, and traction. Specific to cybersecurity is the understanding of the history and evolution of the industry. Cybersecurity is a relatively new field, and in the last 20 years, it’s grown to be more sophisticated than ever. Being in the know about mergers and acquisitions, technology adoption, company name-changes, and how this evolved is crucial to see opportunity in the space and avoid getting run over by the traditional tech companies. What Do Investors Want to See? Solid Management: Is the management team made up of solid leaders that understand the domain? Do they have the experience and skillsets to be understood in that particular domain? Market Share: Investors want a return on their investment. Is the market big enough not to be pushed out? Funding: What kind of money is backing the organization? In cybersecurity, it takes funding to get technologies to market. It’s not as extensive as pharmaceuticals or medical devices, which have many FDA regulations. Still, the technology itself takes some time to get done, meaning you need to have pockets with enough depth to bring you the runway you need. Culture: The culture of a company and the investor backing it has to be synergistic. When there are inevitable discussions, debates, and challenging situations, people aligned on the philosophies of life and management and structure and returns end up getting through together. In contrast, when it’s not aligned, you see scenarios that can destroy the organization, such as powerplays, struggles, and people not getting fair shakes. Distinctive Technologies: Technologies addressing significant and large problems are going to go further. Investors tend to be turned off by companies who claim to do or solve it all because it is improbable they do. Investors in this space look for companies that do one thing and do them well, especially when funding small or young companies. And for Extra Credit Quantification and Defensible Metrics: Very few companies are quantifying cyber risk or have a defensible set of algorithms that look at cybersecurity in the digital asset context. Today, 85% of businesses are run digitally. The explosion to digitization is parallel to the explosion in cybercrime, and this is what the cyber-criminal attacks. When you can quantify this, many use cases come out of it, including prioritization and insurance limits that aid in prioritizing your cyber program. Read more in the TEN Capital eGuide: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/investor-perspectives-on-the-cybersecurity/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Challenges in Angel Investing

1 min read Investing Challenges in Angel Investing. Angel investing can be fun and financially rewarding to the investor as well as helpful to the startup. It can also be challenging. Before considering becoming an angel investor, there are some challenges to consider: It’s Hands-On Angel investing requires hands-on work with the startups in funding and supporting them after the investment. Angels often fill in the gaps left by the local incubators and accelerator programs in coaching them into a place where they can raise funding. First-time angels can find it time-consuming and expensive to learn the process. It Requires Continuing Education New market segments require the angel investor to learn new industries and business models continually. It’s Risky There’s no collateral for the investment, and it can all go to zero as it’s a risky investment class. One out of ten investments will be a home run, two or three will provide a small return on investment, and the rest will fail. But it Can be Worth it Angel investing is not without its challenges, but it can truly be a rewarding endeavor. Read more about the TEN Capital Network for Investors: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/investor-landing/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

The Benefits of an Angel Network

1 min read An angel investor will find many benefits in joining an angel network. The angel network can build resources to share with the angel, such as due diligence. This is time-intensive work, so it helps to share the load. Angel networks provide more and better deal flow than individual investors can find on their own. The bigger the angel network, the more likely there will be knowledgeable investors about the market segments and startup business models. This lets the angel investor pursue deals outside their core expertise. Angel groups can write bigger checks than individual angels and thus command better terms with the startup. Experienced angel investors can share their knowledge with new angels. This is particularly helpful in setting valuations, defining term sheets, and supporting the company. Angel investors can find diversification through the angel network and its deal flow. An angel network will have more influence over its startup scene than an individual investor. Consider joining an angel network. Read more about the TEN Capital Network for Investors: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/investor-landing/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

Should You Start an Angel Network?

1 min read Should You Start an Angel Network? Before making that decision, there are several questions you will need to ask yourself. Before launching an angel network, assess your community as follows: Do you have accredited investors interested in startup investing? Do you have any investors who will take the lead on diligence and investing for each deal? Are you, or do you have a champion who will organize and lead the angel group for the first two to three years? Do you have a flow of startups seeking funding that you can access? Is there a resource for incubating and educating those startups in the area? Are there local service providers such as attorneys, accountants, financial advisors, and others who can support the startups? Are there other investor groups that currently fund those deals in your community to support syndication? Is there access to follow-on funding for startups? Research your community to see what currently exists and what must be built. Check with the local entrepreneur groups to assess and get their potential support for starting an angel group. Read more about the TEN Capital Network for Investors: http://staging.startupfundingespresso.com/investor-landing/ Hall T. Martin is the founder and CEO of the TEN Capital Network. TEN Capital has been connecting startups with investors for over ten years. You can connect with Hall about fundraising, business growth, and emerging technologies via LinkedIn or email: hallmartin@tencapital.group

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