Affiliate Marketing Blog: An Interview With Someone You May Not Know

This is an interview with Bill Morrow, Co-Founder of Angels Den - the site that connects entrepreneurs looking for funding and Angel Investors who have cash available to invest in companies that need funding. I knew they had a load of exciting things coming up (as I'm posting this Bill is in a meeting with possibly the most famous English person alive) so I'd thought I'd ask him a few questions (and for those of you who are wondering, Bills not going to talk about paid links or blog submissions!)

1) Hi Bill, first off, what the heck made you start a web business?

Angels Den was set up when we had trouble securing funding and wasted almost £15k on traditional angel networks co-founders.

We wanted to take the stuffiness and mystique out of investment funding. We are passionate about the fact that with a good idea and a good business brain anyone should be able to get funding to make their dream business a reality.

2) So if it was difficult to raise capital back then for an online idea when bankers were seemingly throwing money at the daftest of ideas, what hope do you think entrepreneurs have now, and how can Angels Den solve that problem?

Angels Den is seeing a surge of interest from entrepreneurs, as banks are increasingly cautious about investing in fledgling businesses. The site welcomed over 400 start-ups in December 2008 due to the desire to find alternative sources of funding.

3) Why do Angels register with you and who are these Angels?

Most investors are looking at their asset allocation at the moment in the hope of spreading their risks over a wide range of asset classes. With angel investing they can have a much greater control over their investments, they're not reliant on an fund manager to look after their investments, it's down to them. Angels Den helps these Angels find and filter suitable business investments in a way they'd find hard to do offline.

We have experienced a 31% rise in membership from high-net worth individuals, who each have a minimum of £250,000 to invest. In December 2008 alone, 268 angel investors joined Angels Den, almost a third more than in November 2008 – partly due to the current financial markets as well as a greater number of referrals from others in the industry.

To join Angels Den, investors must have at least a quarter of a million pounds of available capital to invest directly into early stage companies. Investors can reap huge returns from these new business ventures.

Angel investors are becoming increasingly frustrated with conventional investments and are looking for new ways to invest their money. People are telling us daily that they are sick of people losing money for them and would prefer some control over their business affairs.

They are looking for other avenues to invest their money other than the banks at present

4) What's the quality of the available investments though? It's all well having over 4,000 angels using the site, looking for suitable companies to invest in if the business plans of the companies aren't up to scratch.

It's been a process of educating the market, there's a best practice-type of approach to raising capital via Angel Investors. It's not like television depicts it. There's sound, thought-out personal and financial information needed, there's the ability to convey your skills and requirements as well as proving that you understand the angel investment process.

We provide a wealth of information on our blog which helps entrepreneurs get the most out of the site; we've provided tips such as:

How to Approach Angel Investors - The Right Way

How To Write An Executive Summary

How to Approach Angel Investors

How to Pitch To An Angel Investor

How do Start Up Companies Go About Raising Money These Days?

What Do Business Angels Look For In A Deal?

How to Raise Business Funding

which have played its part in improving the quality of the business plans to a level where the number of deals done monthly has risen to a fantastic figure.

5) For those that don't know, what is the process for raising angel investment using Angels Den?

Entrepreneurs can upload a business summary for just £99, which are reviewed by the 2000 plus registered potential investors. Business angels view the applications and can request a more detailed business plan. Entrepreneurs can then submit a full business plan for £400. If a business angel is interested, Angels Den will set up a meeting. Angels Den then steps out and the entrepreneur and angel complete agreements, having only invested initially £499 in finding each other – a fraction of the costs of traditional matching services.

Once again, the figures speak for themselves as business plans submitted to the site have successfully secured at least one angel meeting and some have as many as seven angels to choose from.

The site has the largest number of angel investors in Europe.

Come along to 'what angels want' to find out how ….25th Feb

6) Give me a taste of these events. What actually happens? What's the atmosphere like, it's not full of stuffy people talking about suit lining?

The atmosphere is electric. Unlike Dragon's Den, it is not intimidating for entrepreneurs as they are able to engage with the Angel Investor. We are not looking to slay any entrepreneurs at Angels Den!

At our last Speedpitching event, on 6 Jan 2008, over 260 individual pitches were made.

14 entrepreneurs gave individual three minute pitches to 19 Angel Investors in a bust-gutting three hour extravaganza held in Central London. Many of our entrepreneurs came away with strong expressions of interest from not just one Angel, but a few.

We launched Speedpitching in May 2008 and we are the only company to offer individual pitches to a number of Angel Investors at a single event.

7) It seems like a great idea. But how do you get people to the site. I know about the SEO, ePR and Search Marketing side, but what else do you do to attract angels to make it worthwhile for the entrepreneurs and business owners to interest the angels?

Apart from the usal methods you've outlined above, we also do the usual PR stuff and a whole heap of networking. But I'm excited about the new Angels Den affiliate programme where we offer 10% of the fees for entrepreneurs this will be £9.90 for a validated entrepreneur registration and £49.90 for a validated business plan registration. We currently have great success attracting Angel Investors so we're not looking to monetise their registration, but we're evaluating whether we should. Obviously the ratio of entrepreneur registrations to Angel registrations is heavily in favour of the former so I doubt that there'll be any leakage to worry about.

7) You've gone for an in-house programme, why is that?

Well we're a growing business and we're reinvesting the majority of our revenues into the development of the technology and the events so we're trying to not let our costs run away with ourselves. Also as a B2B offering we don't anticipate having many thousands of affiliates register which would require a network to manage the process. We're looking for a good number of specialist affiliates that can take the programme further and would like to have a more direct relationship with them.

8) The majority of people I know think that the financial world ends in the City of London and over to Docklands. Isn't there a demand across the country? What do you do to satisfy their needs?

We are building a network of excellent partners across the UK and further afield and we are finding there is demand in many other places not just London. People were travelling from North, places like Plymouth and Yarmouth too to London for SP and from London up to the SP we ran in Doncaster

9) It's all good stuff, I can see why in the current market as people will be finding it difficult to raise "love money" or debt finance that angel investments is one possible route. But what about the future? How do you see Angels Den progressing over the next year to 5 years?

The Angels Den brand is becoming more and more recognisable among the entrepreneurial world including MBA schools, incubator units and links Chambers of Commerce, Business Links, IOD – many of whom are running Angels Den events.

We also have a magazine being launched in the near future which is going out to over 10,000 business owners and High Net Worth Individuals as well some extremely exciting news (huge, mega, immense) hopefully in the near future.

The aim is national coverage then world domination…..with more events, Speedpitching as a household name, more partnerships, Angel events, TV, Radio…

Last year, Angels Den completed over 134 deals, of companies securing funding from angel investors, at an average size of £220,000.

Almost a fifth of our entrepreneurs have secured funding - this is ten times the national average, a staggering success rate. This year we are aiming to make even greater advances in this area.

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Well thanks Bill. I'm sure those that work in the b2b financial sphere would be interested in promoting the system then they can here or if they needed funding for a nice little web 2.0 project (or anything else) they can visit Angels Den to find out more.