Get Your Business Funded: Creative Methods for Getting the Money You Need

What Do Angels Look For?

An angel, as the name suggests, is a high net worth individual who is willing to take a risk and invest in early-stage businesses. In exchange for an angel's monetary investment, you must be willing to give up ownership shares, power, some decision-making ability, and seats on your board; those are the price of admission if you want to play ball in the big leagues.

Angels often invest in the field from which they came, so you can find angel investors in agriculture, entertainment, restaurants, and everything in between. And as varied as the industries are, so too are the angels. Some are rich individuals looking for a smart investment, while others, increasingly, are a group of angels who have teamed up to share resources, leads, investments, and, of course, profits.

As should be apparent already, the first thing angel investors look for is the chance to make a significant return on their investment. They calculate this by looking at your business model through the prism of the following factors:

The opportunity. Why is the idea that you are presenting a great opportunity for this angel investor? Is there something special going on right now? Have you created the Next Big Thing? Do you have some sort of unfair advantage that you can exploit? Why is this a unique opportunity and how will your business capitalize on it?

An angel investment group may receive up to 100 proposals a month, some more, most much less. A good 90 percent will never even make it ...