Conf calling

Originally, I was supposed to meet with Liddy Karter personally, but on a late notice, she had to cancel but offered a conf call, which I (through Leigh) accepted... Once the time for the call was getting closer, I started to almost panic... Jesus, what will we talk about, we've never seen each other, arrangements were made through another person, there was no clear agenda... well, it was going to be interesting... or not...

And it was like I feared... "Blind" conf calls really suck... But I learned a couple of things that were interesting...

Firstly, Liddy is the person responsible for public policy issues at Angel Capital Association (ACA), and I was surprised that ACA had such a person and actually so much interest in public policy issues - but I guess it is in line with what I already learnt: that there is no rapid development in entrepreneurship or financing without the governments... Secondly, Liddy shared with me some experience, and it turns out that just tax incentives can bring angel investing levels from zero to tens of millions dollars in just a couple of years - example of Wisconsin where from 0 dollars invested by angels in 1994 they got to over 12 million dollars in tax credits in 1998, and Wisconsin provides tax credits at a level of 25%, which means that there was actually a total of at least $ 48m invested by angels in that year... (we can compare with € 16m in venture capital in the Czech Republic in 2008)

Czech Republic would definitely need an active angel group or even groups, and of course smart approach by the government...

Also, I got an interesting tip from Liddy for resources and best practices, including samples of term sheets and screening docs... Definitely worth looking at...