Angel investor groups vary in structure, from formal to informal. Formal groups follow strict participation requirements that guide members’ minimum investment activity and event attendance. Melbourne Angels is an incorporated non-profit association that facilitates access to deal flow and collaborative deal evaluation by its members. The group is not an investment vehicle, rather individual members make their own decisions to invest in specific deals of interest.

As is typical of Angel groups, the investments made by individual Melbourne Angels members ranges widely from $10,000 to $50,000 per deal. Those investments can aggregate into $50,000 to $500,000 total investment per deal, depending on how many group members are interested in the deal. Most Angels make 2-4 investments per year and we are patient investors, our portfolio companies typically taking at least five years to reach a first exit.

While no two Angel groups operate exactly alike, most Angel groups maintain a local or regional geographic focus in order to maximize members’ ability to actively engage in the growth of their investments. Melbourne Angels likes the convenience of local deals but, we view Australia as a single community and actively encourage entrepreneurs from anywhere in the country to consider us as prospective investors for their high growth businesses. We already have a size-able portion of our portfolio from outside Victoria.

The Melbourne Angels web site provides criteria and directions for business plan submission. We use the Angelsoft collaboration platform to manage our deal flow and submission into this system through our web site is the only way we accept new opportunities.

Our members share the work load of screening new opportunities a disciplined process designed to give the entrepreneur and the group a rapid and high quality assessment against the group’s criteria. If successful at screening an opportunity is offered free pitch coaching by our members to ensure the entrepreneur puts their best foot forward when presenting to the group and to ensure that the members don’t miss a good opportunity because of poor presentation skills. After presenting to the group an opportunity may proceed to further evaluation and, if that is positive enough to generate investment commitments from members for the funds being sought, the process moves into a terms sheet and formal due diligence. The next steps are investment and engagement through a non-executive director role as the group continues to seek pro-active involvement in assisting and supporting the company to achieve a high value exit (think 10+ times the money invested).

At every stage in this process there are three possible response from the group - Yes, No, Monitor. With every decision delivered to the entrepreneur we provide constructive feedback.

Yes means we want to proceed the deal to the next step of our process

No means we do not want to proceed with the deal any further

Monitor means that we are interested in moving forward but, we have identified some specific achievements, issues, or events that need to be completed or addressed first. We present this information to the entrepreneur along with a recommended timeline and ask if the entrepreneur would like us to keep their deal live in our system for a mutually agreed time to be reassessed against mutually agreed metrics. This may not suit the entrepreneur and that’s okay - after all, it’s the entrepreneur’s business.

When we meet ….

Melbourne Angels meets the second Wednesday of each month to receive presentations from entrepreneurs who have successfully completed the screening and pitch coaching phases of our process.

The last Friday of each month the group has a no-host lunch with members, prospective members and friends of the group. This is a chance for us all to share our questions, knowledge and thoughts on markets, technologies and strategies that impact our activities and choices as Angel investors.

For easy to read, informative books check out the free ebooks byMelbourne Angels member Tom McKaskill. To get started try this one now An Introduction to Angel Investing.