Dear
Friends,
Over the past several months, CommonAngels has been very active
with several new investments and an exciting initiative around
funding seed stage teams and ideas.
|
| Seed
Investments |
 We have gotten much more active in participating in
pre-seed and seed stage rounds, particularly for web based
businesses. We are actively making small investments in seed stage
startups based solely on the joint decision of the two managing
directors. These rounds will typically be between $100K and $1M
with us as a small but catalytic participant. We
have added this strategy because we are all aware of the lower
development costs and faster iteration cycles honed by the latest
generation of web startups. The lean startup approach has helped
to provide a framework for how to quickly and efficiently test a
startup's key business hypothesis.
We have seen companies in the gaming sector, ecommerce sector, or
with subscription businesses create enormous value in a short
period of time by focusing on compelling products and a developing
a deep understand of customer lifetime value and acquisition costs.
These innovations are less about technology and more about
distribution, marketing, and execution.
We will make our decisions on these startups very quickly and look
forward to working with talented entrepreneurs in testing their
exciting concepts. We feel that Boston needs more investors
willing to act quickly for these entrepreneurs and we're stepping
up to the opportunity!
|
| Right-Sized
Series A Rounds |
 We continue to lead and
join Seed Preferred and Series A rounds with other angels and VC
firms around $1.5M with the goal of completing those in two months.
This continues to be a significant gap in the market, particularly
for companies that could have a successful exit in the M&A
market.
|
| Three
New Investments in Q3 |
|
In
Q3, we made three new investments:
All
three are pre-launch now. Clovr and Ayeah have initial details on
their websites and will be sharing more shortly. Blaze will
be revealing its product in the near future.
|
| Kendall Square
Office |
| To
be closer to many of the great entrepreneurs in Boston, we've also
opened a new office at the Cambridge Innovation Center at One
Broadway. This space is in addition to our existing space at One
Cranberry Hill in Lexington. We look forward to collaborating more
closely with everyone in Cambridge, downtown, Back Bay and along
RT128.
|
