Record-breaking Investments in 2007: The AoA Play-by-Play

Here at the AoA we think transparency is a good thing. Plus we're data junkies. Below please see a few facts and figures from our record-breaking deals in 2007. If there's anything you'd like to know and don't see, we can pretty much slice and dice our stats any way that may be of interest, so don't hesitate to email us . Also feel free to post a comment (if you didn't get enough from the thread following John Cook's blog); this month the topic of angel investing has ranged from spectator sport to bench-clearing brawl.

As with any sport, we have our own ground rules for reporting:

• We only report investments made in companies that were screened, coached and selected to present to the Alliance of Angels membership. Red flag: some groups report all investments reported by their members, regardless of whether or not the angel organization was involved.
  
• We clearly distinguish "direct investment" (our own members' investment in the companies described above) from "indirect investment" (additional investment our members facilitated through their network). Yellow flag: some groups will consolidate both categories into a single group of "facilitated" investment.
  

Just the stats, ma'am:

• 174: companies interviewed, coached, screened (90 minute meetings)
• 32: new investment opportunities that were selected from the above, and presented to our membership
• 15: investments in new companies (just about 50% of the new opportunities reviewed by our membership).
• 9: 3 minute updates made by companies who had previously presented and were funded by AoA returned to give brief presentations when seeking another round of funding.
• 8: of these 9 received follow-on funding
• 21: additional AoA portfolio companies from prior years received follow-on investment from our members.
• 44: grand total of AoA investments tracked in 2007.

Show me the money:

• $3.9 million tracked in direct funding from our membership, in AoA companies
  
• $3.3 million in additional sources facilitated by AoA ("indirect" funding)

• 87% of the new companies who received investment were high-tech
• These deals received 85% of the total direct dollars (the other 13% of deals, 15% of dollars were consumer product and retail).
• 93% of companies receiving follow-on investment were high-tech, and received 92% of this category of funding (correspondingly, 7% of the deals were consumer/retail and received 8% of the dollars)

For more fun with stats, and some color commentary, check out our press release.