Comments on: Innovation in Early-Stage Investing? You Bet! And MN Firm Is Major Player

By: Graeme Thickins

Graeme Thickins — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:00:47 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Lisa. Seeing as how Gov Pawlenty is the current head of the National Governors Assn, maybe he’ll take heed of the group’s recommendations about angel investing? That is, if he isn’t too busy fending off questions about a certain presidential candidate…

And, Mike, you are so right. Any community needs the successful entrepreneurs who have already scored big with previous endeavors to get involved with helping promising new entrepreneurs get started. We seem to have our share of those individual angels here in MN, and some are active investors. We just don’t have enough of them — esp in the Internet space. (Now, medical devices may be a different story.) Also, for some reason, angels seem to want to band together more here….maybe it’s a MN thing? We don’t have too many individual cowboys here who wield their checkbooks in the classic Silicon Valley sense — meaning stories like Andy Bechtolsheim writing the first check to Google for $100,000, even before they had a corporate checking account.

cheers,
Graeme

By: Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:17:12 +0000

As a founder of an online company, i know how important angel funding is. It is crucial – especially for first time entrepreneurs. While what RAIN is doing is great, it’s equally important that successful entrepreneurs invest in new ventures in the area. This is why silicon valley has been so successful in getting new companies to grow – there is a huge infrastructure that is willing to fund new ideas. It has to be more than one big group.

By: Lisa Foote

Lisa Foote — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:36:13 +0000

Great overview of the history and future challenges for angel investing and the clear and compelling opportunities for a bigger government role in future.