Every week I receive emails from dating site startups about how to get funded. Traditional VC’s have traditionally avoided the dating space, most investments come from single angel investors or angel syndicates. The problem has been how to find angels who are open to dating site pitches. What if there was a website that aggregated angels and VC and made it easy for entrepreneurs to get their pitch in front of interested parties?
Hank Williams at Why Does Everything Suck summarizes Angelsoft:
Angelsoft is a platform that almost every angel investor group, and many VCs use to manage deal flow. It is an automated system that allows an entrepreneur to submit information to one or many early stage investors in one application process. Its a very cool idea that I think one day could make early stage private equity a much more fluid market.
Angelsoft says there are several dozen websites that connect entrepreneurs with investors.
The sad reality, however, is that while it is extremely easy to get hungry entrepreneurs to list their plans, it is well-nigh IMPOSSIBLE to get investors to show up on the other side of the curtain…for the simple reason that (a) the ratio of investors to entrepreneurs is about 1:1000, and (b) investors are so deluged with opportunities that they simply don’t go out LOOKING for plans; plans come to them!
So, here we are, having built the world’s first VIABLE platform connecting the two worlds. Our challenge: how do we create a home page to differentiate ourselves from all of the pretenders, EACH OF WHOM IS MAKING THE SAME CLAIMS…while in reality, Angelsoft is the only legitimate site of the bunch. (As a matter of fact, while the 1:1000 ratio is probably accurate for most of the other sites, ours is actually about 2:1 in the other direction!)
There is a good link to the Frank Peters Show about how to write a great executive summary. I’m amazed at how poorly most executive summaries are written. Required reading if you actually want someone to check you out.
If you are looking to raise funding for your dating startup, check out the Anglesoft blog, post your plan and let us know how it goes.
