1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me try to ask you some questions that would help us understand how to work with you for our entrepreneurs. Let’s double-click down on Sand Hill Angels. Could you please explain to our audience how Sand Hill Angels work? What would be the procedure for us to work with you?

Let’s say you’re interested in a company, how would we go about it? What size of investments should we think about doing with the Sand Hill Angels group? Let’s build on that and we’ll come to your other methods of investment.

Amos Ben-Meir: Sand Hill Angels is an organization that has about a hundred members. The organization has been around for a long time. It was founded around the year 2000 but it has evolved over the years. It looks quite different today than it did when it started. I’ve been with the organization since 2014. We do, on average, 40 to 50 deals a year. A good chunk of those are investments from our follow-ons.

Sramana Mitra: What is the average round size?

Amos Ben-Meir: The sweet spot is between $125,000 and $250,000. That’s where most of the deals fall. Those are for new investments.

Sramana Mitra: In that round, how many investors would typically be part of a round like that?

Amos Ben-Meir: On average, 10. We end up as one entry on the cap table because we invest through an LLC structure.

Sramana Mitra: So it is a check size.

Amos Ben-Meir: The minimum check size is $50,000. We don’t do less than that. At least, two members need to be interested in the deal. We’ve done larger check sizes than $250,000. We’ve done as close to a million but those are outliers.

Sramana Mitra: Is it one LLC that does all your deals or are you doing special purpose vehicles for each of them?

Amos Ben-Meir: We do annual LLC. Within an annual LLC, we have what’s called a class. Let’s say we do 10 new deals in 2018. All fall under the same LLC but under different classes. If a follow-on investment happens on a company in 2019 or 2020, it’ll be done under the same entity and the same class. The companies we invest in don’t see the class structure. They just see the LLC. It’s something we’ve done and put together with a lot of the legal firms we’ve worked with.

Sramana Mitra: From the company’s standpoint, they don’t need to know all these details. They just need to know that they’re working with one person in the group who’s going to lead the deal and bring in the syndication from the group.

Amos Ben-Meir: To the company, we look like a syndicate. When we’re going through our process, they may interact with more than one person. After we make the investment, there’s just one person that interacts with the company. In that sense, the group operates like a syndicate.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels
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