And after a quick meeting with Leigh at the 30th Street station in Philly, I picked up the rental car (Camry, Camry) and went off to spend the whole afternoon at the Robin Hood Ventures meeting at Mill Grove, the first home of John James Audubon (who I've never heard of before, but who is one of the best known ornitologists and bird-painter - see picture on the left)... Just when I arrived and parked the car, Steve Welch of DreamIt Ventures arrived - 2009 USA Fellow who invited me and hosted me at the meeting... And he came by a Lexus of course... :-)
The meeting itself was very interesting, this time from the organizational perspective - it was not just a screening meeting (although it included one presentation), but it was just a standard monthly meeting, with full agenda and only 3 guests (2 prospective members and 1 stranger - me)... RHV invest as a group and always create a new SPV... The investor is always announced to be RHV... Also, they create "Benchmark Fund" (where again members can but don't have to invest) to co-invest and do follow-ups if necessary... And finally, at RHV there seem to be usually larger number of investing members, with smaller investments starting at around $ 10k... Very nice model, although it might end up with a lot of micro stakes in different companies, which might be a huge headache, so I suppose such model requires high self-control by the members...Interesting discussion was around whether or not it is good to invest in companies which eventually need to raise more money from VCs - whether or not it is beneficial to be A-round investors when there will be "evil VCs" in the B- or C-round... Up till now I have never thought that angels could possibly feel negative about VCs coming in later - it means liquidity (or at least re-valuation) event, increases the chances of the company being sold for big $$$ and also it means there is one more partner to care about value creation at the company level... Yes, dilution and timing might be an issue, but I very much believe that everybody's motivation, including VCs and angels is the same... But will think about it...
Interesting perspective was brought by one of the members when he said that VCs sometimes just prefer 5x now to 10x in 3 years, and angels' motivation is different... Still don't understand exactly why... Also, what was mentioned is statistics from American VCs (presented at the recent ACA conference): A-round investors expect at least 10x, B-round 4 to 7x and C-round 2x... Is there any letter before an A...???
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