Jevon MacDonald

co-founder of Startupnorth.ca

DemoCamp Halifax 3 – David Crow edition

logoGreat news. Democamp is going back to its roots (it is happening at a bar this time) and Milan has lined up David Crow to speak. He will be in town because he is working with The Next Phase on some stuff so it seemed like a great time to put him to work.

David is the co-founder of StartupNorth, founder of DemoCamp, co-founder of Nakama (ask him about this one… a wee bit ahead of its time), co-founder of Influitive and is currently in residence at OMERS Ventures. He has a better pulse on the Canadian Venture and Startup community than anyone else. He’s also a father to two of the sweetest little girls you will ever meet.

This Democamp is going to be kept small and 100% focused on great demos from high potential startups. It will be a lot of fun. Think of it less as a conference and more like a chance to hang out with some friends. We are calling it Mini because we are getting rid of the frills but I promise the startups and their demos will be as BIG as ever.

The event is free for Entrepreneurs and Students. We could use a few sponsors to cover costs, so please get in touch with Milan if you can help out. These sponsorships are a great value because they are just meant to keep the event out of the red.

You can register on Eventbrite.

Should you pay to pitch an angel group? What the data says

tennis-serve-technique-pitchWe have seen a pretty amazing wealth of information about financing models and structures come to light in the last 10 years. It wasn’t that long ago that VC and Angel financing were dark arts which few entrepreneurs understood. We have always worked hard to demystify startup financing on StartupNorth and have done a long series of articles which was focused on shedding light on angel investing as an option for entrepreneurs which began in 2006.

But the question we hear a lot is “Should I have to pay an angel group to pitch them?” 

I’ll keep it simple: Generally the answer is No. By definition angel groups are made up of wealthy individuals who are happy to foot the bill to organize the group.

For example a group might have 100 members all paying $1000 a year. That would mean that the angels themselves are fronting $100,000, which is generally enough to hire a part time (or even fulltime) director or organizer as well as to host the necessary meetings (sometimes members will donate space for the meetings as well or offer other services in-kind).

But if you do have to pay, how much should you expect to pay?

The Angel Capital Association provides direct guidance on this here.

  • 31 out of 81 angel groups surveyed charge fees.
  • Of the groups that charge, the range of fees is $175 – $750
  • with two outliers at $1,500 and $3,000, average = $580
  • average without outliers = $338

We have surveyed all Canadian groups and with the exception of one of the outliers mentioned by the Angel Capital Association above, fees in Canada are at similar levels but are charged less often (closer to 25% of the time).

We have only found two groups in North America which currently also charge a percentage fee (Both in Atlantic Canada, one charging 8% and the other charging approx a 1/2 percent to 2 percent) of the transaction, so generally speaking you will never have to give another fee or piece of the transaction over to the group. We have not completed our research on this and if we uncover any more we will share that data here.

Our advice? Tell the angel group that you prefer to forego the fee completely. If they believe you have a great deal then a shrewd angel group will still want to get an opportunity to fund you. If they say “no way”? Then you have to decide just how serious you think THEY are.

On Values

A friend of mine, who just finished his time after helping grow a startup very quickly, said this to me tonight:

A company has 3 sets of values: the ones they want people to think (what a corporation engraves in their lobby), what management believes is important (policies and stated benefits), and finally the values demonstrated by the people who succeed. The first is bullshit, the second is throwing money at the symptoms, and the last one is the only thing that matters.

It’s a great observation (along the lines of the Netflix culture deck) but it is also a challenge.

As founders, employees and even investors our values translate in to very real things for our employees and customers.

Which values do you live?