Third (back off our soapbox), we are dedicating most of our second day to hearing updates from our portfolio companies. An absolute key part of angel group management is keeping track of the portfolio.
At an elementary (and yet surprisingly complex) level, making sure the right investors own the right things, cash is in the right place at the right time, entities are formed and administered at the right time. That’s what members pay for.
But at a more strategic level, you can’t expect a positive return unless you know what’s happening in your investment portfolio. This is (relatively) easy for publicly traded companies that publish quarterly data that you can monitor in your brokerage platform. It’s much harder for private companies. But on the flipside, there is much more you can do to help early-stage companies.
The VentureSouth team is primarily paid through carry: we really get paid only if the investments are successful. We are therefore focused on helping portfolio companies succeed. And obviously investors are too: if you just put $10,000 into a startup, you’re probably happy to make a few calls to help see that $10,000 again.
This help can take many forms and is too long for a blog post. But suffice to say now that hearing in-person updates from companies on what has recently gone well, what hasn’t, what’s next, and how we can help is helpful. We’ll be hearing from nine companies this month – and quizzing them and finding ways to help.