Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Angels Investors are Coming to Boston in June

Two really great events for startups to get exposure to angel investors are being held in Boston this June.angels

The first event, Angel Boot Camp is being held June 1, 2010 at Microsoft NERD.  This event is spearheaded by Jon Pierce, local;  Hacker, Entrepreneur, Founder of Betahouse, Founding Member of The Awesome Foundation.

The lineup of is an awesome list of successful entrepreneurs and angel investors that includes Angus Davis, David Cohen and Phin Barnes to name only a few.

The stated goal of Angel Boot Camp is to educate, inspire and grow the angel investor community. As such, active and aspiring angels are the primary audience. But we also welcome entrepreneurs, VCs and other people interested in learning more about angel investing, provided they agree not to pitch at the event.

This is a must attend for anyone that has thought about or wants to learn about Angel Investing.

Two weeks after that, the Open Angel Forum Boston is coming. This event was created by the always interesting serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) as a response to the Keretsu Forum that was charging startups to pitch to them.

There have already been Open Angel Forum events in La, and NYC. Both angels and startups had great things to say about the events.

As yet the venue or agenda has not been announced. Currently Jason and Bijan Sabet are the only two investors listed as attending, but expectations are high the list will include the best angels and undiscovered start-ups in the area.   Don't miss this event if you want to meet the best start-ups and angel investors in Boston.

Apply here if you are an angel, start-up or interested in sponsoring the event.

Wow, that is such great news for the local web startup scene! The month of June should produce an interesting crop of new companies or provide some much needed capital for the seed program participants.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Local VCs Return to Entrepreneurship: NOT !

So we were totally wrong on this. It turns out word has it that along with David Beisel, Rob and Lee are forming a new fund to make early stage investments. So much for jumping back into the ranks of entrepreneurs. :-)



Recently, a couple of local Venture Capitalists have made the jump out of the investment ranks and into the struggling entrepreneur cohort.


This is good news that we are adding to the ranks some potentially important new companies to the local New England startup community. This is a much preferred trend than the opposite where successful founders become VCs.

The new companies that they are working on are as yet unannounced, but we will be tracking their progress and profile the new companies as soon as some information is available.

Rob Go a former principal at Spark Capital made his announcement at the end of his post Top 3 Things I Learned as a VC

"I’m starting something new that I am very excited about.  My co-founders and I have already begun laying the groundwork, but we aren’t ready to talk openly about what we are doing just yet (stealth mode is back in vogue again, after all.)  That said, I’ve always been a pretty open and transparent guy, so I’m sure I’ll be sharing more details soon."

On Monday May 3rd, Lee Hower announced his transition from a principal at Point Judith Capital to work on his new project in his post Changes... my transition & new plans.

We wish them both the best of luck and look forward to watching their new companies grow successful here in the Boston area.