I was enlightened and a bit infuriated after the COIN (Colorado Innovation Network) event. One trusted individual stood on that respected stage and declared that Colorado angel investors are disjointed and not investing. I realized right then that it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone knows that statement isn’t true at all.
RVC companies saw $22 million in Colorado capital invested in the last 12 months.
Why is this my responsibility? In my last role as the Director of Operations for the Rockies Venture Club, I watched over $22 Million leave the pockets of angel investors and local VCs and go right in to the startup companies that pitched in our program. $22 million in the last 12 months! It’s my responsibility to share the news. And now that you know this information, it’s your responsibility to shout it from the rooftops too. I’ll get back to this point about making noise.
Does that mean that Rockies Venture Club is directly responsible for $22 Million in investments? Since RVC isn’t legally connected to the financial transaction, it’s hard to say which of those deals would have closed if they didn’t have the RVC investor forum or the RVC monthly pitch event to support the deal. Eythor Bendor, CEO of FitBionic publicly thanked Rockies Venture Club last month when he said that a significant portion of his $2.2 Million raise came from RVC Investors and that he’s pretty sure he could not have closed the deal with Colorado investors if it weren’t for RVC.
It’s not just Rockies Venture Club companies that are seeing success in fundraising. Erik Mitisek’s July article in Builtin Denver highlighted the first half of 2013 in Colorado with some pretty nice numbers. He noted 56 companies that raised a collective $165 Million. I can tell you by looking at the list that it’s not complete. Most of the RVC companies aren’t listed there. Only 5 of the companies on Erik’s list overlap with the RVC list. This means that the total amount of early stage capital moving into startups in Colorado is much larger that we are reporting.
The angel deals I’ve seen in the last year averaged around $600k. The largest deal I saw was... read the full post
Original by Nicole Gravagna posted on NicoleGravagna.com