Brad Feld

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Open Angel Forum in Boulder on 2/3/10

Jan 16, 2010
Category Investments

The Open Angel Forum is coming to Colorado and having it’s first event in Boulder on 2/3/10.  David Cohen – the CEO of TechStars – has written an extensive post titled Open Angel Forum – Colorado bound! which includes all the background leading up to this, along with information about:

  1. Attending OAFCO as an angel investor
  2. Presenting at OAFCO as an entrepreneur
  3. Sponsoring the event if you are a service provider

Each event will only have 10-15 angels in attendance – all will be active investors.  We’ll have five companies presenting.  It will be an intimate event – if you want to get a feel for the chatter check out the twitter stream on Open Angel Forum take a look at Mark Suster’s post on the Inaugural Open Angel Forum.

I’m made angel investments in over 75 companies since 1994 and had a number of magnificent outcomes including NetGenesis (IPO), Critical Path (IPO), Harmonix (acquired by MTV), and Nutrisystems (IPO).  Yeah – plenty of my angel investments haven’t gone anywhere, but in all cases I’ve had an awesome time working with entrepreneurs to create amazing new companies.

My relationship with David Cohen and TechStars has reinforced this for me as I’ve seen many of the young TechStars companies raise money from angels, go on to raise money from institutional VCs, or be acquired.  I’ve also seen a renaissance in the super angel category with folks like Jeff Clavier at SoftTechVC, Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, the First Round Capital guys, Ron Conway, and David Cohen start to “institutionalize” this category.

One of my deeply held beliefs is a key part of the role of an angel investor is to help the entrepreneur – and operate in support of the entrepreneur.  I’ve always despised the “pay to pitch”schemes that some angel groups have (where the entrepreneur has to pay to pitch) and wrote a post titled An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit. This started a bunch of noise around this issue which Jason Calacanis amplified – resulting in him creating the Open Angel Forum.  I count myself as a proud supporter of this effort and co-collaborator in OAFCO with David Cohen.

If you are an angel investor in Colorado, send David Cohen an email and come help us support new entrepreneurs. If you are an entrepreneur in Colorado looking for angel investors, apply to come to the first OAFCO event.

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