An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Marianne: We are focused on helping angel groups grow and do things that are important to their stability and general operations. So, we’ve put together, I think, a lot of good referral services and places for good information.

We have partnered with Angelsoft to make sure that they have free access to their platform that helps them in the management of their organizations.

We have a great members-only section with pretty much every document or template they might need to get going. We offer a lot of professional development. I think some of our conferences provide dynamite information and great networking, too.

In the area of public policy, we are trying to represent our members and, to some extent, angels in general in Washington, D.C.

As an example, we got involved in what finally became the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill and tried to make sure that the standards for accredited investors stayed relatively the same. So, we could keep as many angels out there as possible and also make sure there were no requirements for entrepreneurs in filing their funding that would have kept them from being able to raise capital.

On the ACEF side, we offer a series of seven seminars and workshops in angel investing. There’s a series that helps angels learn the blocking and tackling of being an angel investor. Some of that information is also interesting to get in the heads of entrepreneurship leaders, university faculty and students, and even policy makers.

Finally, we do work in data and research. We’re trying to put together excellent data on what’s happening with angel investment. What are the trends? What are the things that could really inform the industry?

Irina: How do these workshops operate?

Marianne: We partner with local organizations. It could be an angel group,  a local economic development organization or chamber of commerce, or a university. Then we send one of our expert angel trainers to their community to put on the course.

Some of the courses are all day, and some are half days. We provide good information during the day with a lot workbooks for the people who attend so they have something to refer to afterward.

We also try to make sure that they get a good combination of learning, so there is a lecture part, and there are panels where we’ll have local entrepreneurs, attorneys, or investors involved in the teaching.

We provide curriculum guidelines for them. Then we have exercises where we use case studies so that the participants can truly learn about something like the valuation of an early stage company.

We have an exercise where they break into two groups. One group is the entrepreneur and the other is the angel group, and they negotiate the valuation in terms of the deal. I think people learn and have a good time with it.

Irina: What is the range of fees for these workshops?

Marianne: We let the local partners set those. There is a range, but I think they tend to charge, for a half-day seminar or workshop, somewhere between $50 and $150 per person, and for an all-day seminar between $100 and $250. It’s up to the local partner.

Irina: What are the key goals for the workshops?

Marianne: You can come at it from different angles. One is for those organizations that want to educate angels. In that case, they want to build the skill and the confidence in being an angel and being more sophisticated at it. For other organizations, it’s really about how to start an angel group and how to think through what’s the right strategy and structure for that particular community.

For entrepreneurs, it’s about understanding the trends and the data about angel investing. That will help them better prepare for the funding process.

This segment is part 3 in the series : An Interview With Marianne Hudson, Executive Director, Angel Capital Association
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