After a year of planning, in February of 2014 I very quietly launched TechU Angels LLC, a seed and venture investment firm, together with Aaron, Alexander, Lisa, Tony, Eddie and Gautam – all friends that I met through my time at MIT. This group of global all-star angel investors, entrepreneurs, and operators came together because we were all frustrated with the current state of seed funding and felt that true support for entrepreneurs in the early stages was not completely where it needed to be.
From the very beginning we realized that the current angel capital models were broken, and we decided to push the envelope and do things a bit differently, because that is what startups and entrepreneurs need in this current environment. We realized that to best support our startups, we needed to be and act like a startup ourselves. That means continually iterating and innovating at every step.
How are we different from a traditional angel investment group or firm?
- Global nature – given the advances of technology and video conferencing in general, we don’t believe it makes sense to have an angel group focused on a specific city or region (like most are today). The world is global and so are we. You can find our partners in the thriving startup ecosystems of Boston, San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv, Singapore, and Mumbai.
- More efficient due diligence process – although discussions may stretch over a period of time, once we decide we are in on a deal, we aim very strictly to keep our due diligence process to less than 3 weeks. We think that is fair for the entrepreneurs and also for our time. We don’t think 3 to 6 months is right or makes business sense and we hope other angel firms move away from that model.
- Open and honest feedback, each and every time – we say what we think and feel about your startup because we know that is what will help you in the long run. If we decide not to invest, it’s only fair that we are clear and open about how we feel. There is no point in having you run after us for weeks (or months) if you can be making better use of your time finding folks who are more aligned with what you’re trying to create. If we can share feedback along the way that helps, why not. We want you to succeed regardless.
- Using technology to make things easier – we may be the only angel investment firm in the world to develop our own due diligence and deal evaluation platform all directly in house. We have built proprietary technology which helps us evaluate deals faster, and more efficiently than others in the space and we think that will give us an added advantage.
- Ability to invest across stages – we think it’s pretty poor business sense to invest in the seed stage of a firm, but not join the Series A (or B) rounds for those startups that are on a tear. This is called pro-rata rights and we intend to acquire it whenever possible and make good use of our long-term ability to support our startups over several stages. We are building our follow on investment capabilities and we are particularly fortunate to get guidance in this area from late stage investors like Dr. Henry Kressel, a veteran tech investor and MD at Warburg Pincus who serves as one of our advisors.
Over this period (since February), we’ve reviewed and met with over 200 startups and we’re glad to announce that we recently completed our first two investments in Hydration Labs, Inc. (“Refresh”) and ledgerX. You can read more about them on our Investments page and see the fantastic news they’ve garnered from publications like the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, International Financial Times and others on our News page.
We were the lead investors in the Refresh round and co-invested with Lightspeed Ventures, Google Ventures, and SV Angels in the ledgerX deal.
We are especially proud that our first two investments came from the MIT ecosystem given our strong ties to the Institute and what MIT has meant to us professionally and personally in our lives. We expect MIT to be the primary (though not sole) focus of where we find good opportunities.
Since many of you will ask, I will share this information here. For those startups who wish to get in touch with us, the best way to get started is by filling out a very brief form at the following link. We try to be as efficient as possible and aim to respond super fast.
Finally, I started this blog a few weeks back with the intention of maintaining it as the one source of news and updates about our work and firm. If you’d like to stay on top of what’s happening with us, please click on the menu bar (up top) and add your email as a subscriber to this blog. I promise not to send clutter.
Thank you for being a part of our journey.
