Recently, I forwarded a post of 1 this year /view.asp? Id=ZXKM0KM5, which is enlightening.
Take a look at this paragraph first:
There are nearly 250,000 angel investors in the US investment market, with an average annual investment of 80,000 US dollars per person, with a total annual investment of nearly 20 billion and an average investment of about 30,000 enterprises. The investment scale is three to five times that of institutional investors, and the number of investment projects is 20-50 times that of institutional investors. Angel investment has developed to a very developed level in the United States.
What is the composition of angels in america? Angels in America are successful entrepreneurs or company directors, rich literary stars, sports stars, doctors, lawyers and accountants. The average age of American investment angels is 47. I earned enough money from my first job in the first half of my life to do my second job and become an angel. The average annual income is $90,000 and personal assets are $750,000. The average annual investment is equivalent to a person's annual income or more than 65,438+00% of his assets.
The number of individual angel investment projects in the United States is 20-50 times that of institutional investment. In my first experience as an angel intern (1), I mentioned that the main body of domestic angel investment should be private idle funds, which seems reasonable.
Now when domestic entrepreneurs talk about financing, their eyes are always fixed on a few institutions, which is wrong. Everyone should broaden their horizons to individuals with investment aspirations.
In China, many individuals have a little spare money, because they only have limited investment channels, such as stocks and the property market. If more of them take out some money to be angels, they will subjectively expand their investment horizons within the scope of risk tolerance, and objectively support social innovation and create employment opportunities. These potential investors are highly dispersed. To find them and arouse their enthusiasm, they need their own opportunities. These opportunities first come from people looking back from a few investment institutions to their relatives and friends, friends of relatives and friends, and bosses of relatives and friends.
Professional investors are particularly inclined to give up when looking at projects. They think that most entrepreneurial projects and teams are unreliable, and the performance pressure is relatively high. Therefore, the actual investment threshold is relatively high, and it is absolutely not an exaggeration to choose one in a hundred. However, private amateur investors may have their own tastes and perspectives, and the performance pressure is also small. The investment threshold will be much lower, and many imperfect projects or teams will get opportunities.
If seemingly unreliable projects and teams are given the opportunity to do it, learn to fight, and find a fight in the battle, they may be able to break out. Many successful entrepreneurs, aren't they? Therefore, entrepreneurs with poor conditions, rather than relying on investment institutions, should consciously tap personal angels, which should be a wiser choice. From the perspective of potential ability, individual angels can support many more projects than institutions.
2. Reasonable financing scale
It is very important for entrepreneurs to finance individuals and SME owners, that is, a reasonable financing scale. At present, many entrepreneurs are confused about this issue. To establish a suitable financing scale, entrepreneurs must first understand their financing targets.
Just like salary, there is a big gap between the salary of the same person in the United States and that in China. If you take a bag full of dollars to get vc's early investment, the financing amount of the same share is naturally much higher, provided that you can get it. If your project has a certain technical and team threshold, or has formed a certain market share, or the project is in the direction of investment pursuit and the funds can survive, then it is best to ignore RMB and stick to a high value.
If your conditions are not so good, such as the technology and team are not so good, the share is not so conspicuous, the project has passed the investment hotspot or the investment hotspot has not been transferred to you, and the response from several VCS is not so positive, maybe you can only settle for the second best and find RMB institutions to invest. In this case, your financing expectations need to be greatly reduced. If you estimate that it is also difficult to invest in institutions with RMB, and you need to invest through personal angels, then the investment expectation needs to be greatly reduced.
For example, in the same project, with the same 20% shares, USD vc may invest USD 6.5438+0.5 million, RMB institutional investment may only invest RMB 6.5438+0.5 million, and individual investors may only invest RMB 500,000. 500,000 yuan is not a small sum for non-professional individual investors.
How much do you think your project is worth is meaningless. The question is who you can get the money from. It is similar to a restaurant. A dish made of the same raw material costs different in different restaurants.
In addition, it is worth noting that the current investment trend is that it is difficult to obtain financing or high-value valuation without making initial products or even obtaining early evidence of market reaction. If the product is not formed, there is only one idea and one team. Unless the team and project are better, there is little chance to get investment. Even if the funds are small, the restrictions on batch investment will be stricter. In fact, large shares (reserved) are exchanged for small money (instant access). If entrepreneurs have confidence in their own projects, it is best to borrow, borrow and gather together from various channels, work hard first, and then put forward a financing plan according to the financing target after the initial results come out. Of course there are exceptions. If investors are experienced and have resource value, it may be good to let them mix a little shares in the early stage.
After the initial results come out, the main value of angel investment is to make the value of the project clearer, so as to get the next round of investment or be merged. At this stage, because the risk is clear, the actual financing amount is expected to be lower than the chaotic state before product development. You need to decide to what extent the money will bring the project results, and there is no need to ask for too much money, because the reason why you want to raise the money is probably that you have to go through this stage and go to the next round of high-value financing, in which you really show the capital value.
Three. Prepare for financing for individuals and small and medium-sized business owners
There are several points for entrepreneurs to mobilize individuals and small and medium-sized business owners:
1. Reserve box. Entrepreneurs can find some personal angels (preferably ordinary angels, not famous professional angels), who have gained huge profits after investing, forget the details in their hearts and often preach everywhere.
2. Reservation rule. Individuals and SME owners may not know how to operate angel investment. In order to avoid communication difficulties, entrepreneurs can collect relevant terms and even reference documents of other financing projects through friends, and reduce the communication cost with angel investors through more standardized reference standards, thus enhancing the trust of non-professional investors. For example:
Conventional angel share ratio. This place has the biggest ideological conflict, and the shares of the entrepreneurial team must not be less than 60%, otherwise the second financing will be very unfavorable (the first angel's money will not go far, it is likely to be the second financing). It is necessary to make more use of conventional and professional advice. In addition, we can treat grades and shares in stages, dynamically adjust shares, start investors to take a large share, and gradually change shares with the evolution of grades;
The terms of investment in batches according to performance are most easily trusted by investors. The easiest thing for non-professional investors to do is to retreat. We should not only pay attention to continuous communication, but also design milestones in the batch of capital investment, which will not only give investors confidence, but also let them have no buffer space;
A clause requiring investors to agree to large expenditures. This is a regular project of investment agreement, with a large investment limit of 654.38+million and a small investment limit of 30,000-50,000.
The introduction of new investors requires the consent of the original investors, and the entrepreneurial team cannot leave at will.
It is useful to help investors consider their interests and restrain themselves, but at the same time, we should pay attention to reducing the interference of investors (especially non-professional investors) on business.
3. Find the credibility of the third party. For example, people outside the industry want to invest in the Internet, but they don't know what to do. They may feel uncomfortable just listening to you, so introduce them to celebrities in the industry. If a potential investor knows the experts he believes, it will greatly promote his investment in this field.
From the big scientific team