Open Angel Forum and AngelList
Two relatively new resources for startup entrepreneurs looking for angel investments. AngelList springs from the VentureHacks group, while Open Angel Forum was founded by Jason Calacanis, after he challenged all of the angel forums and keiretsus who charged fees to startups seeking angels.
Via WSJ: Earlier this year, Internet entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis started Open Angel Forum, which holds free pitch events in various cities where entrepreneurs selected from a pool of applicants can pitch to about 20 to 30 angel investors. [...] Another free service, AngelList, started in February by angels Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, vets dozens of deals before highlighting the best ones in emails each week sent to a group of 200 investors.
These are open source solutions, like Y Combinator, for startups and angels:
- Open Angel Forum: http://openangelforum.com/
- AngelList: http://venturehacks.com/angellist
- Y Combinator: http://ycombinator.com/
Overnight Startup Successes, Unfair Advantages and VC Pile-Ons
The nature of really breaking out of the startup pack these days is becoming a viral or word of mouth (WOM) overnight success. Outside of Facebook’s social graph anaconda, Twitter has been parlayed forward by Ashton, Oprah, Britney and many of the other known-by-one-name celebs into the next Digg/Facebook/etc.
If American Idol is a barometer of talent – or Susan Boyle, an example of instant stardom (even if it took xx years to get there); then Twitter and now FourSquare are showcases of how to enter the media fray successfully. Read more >>