According to the Pennsylvania Angel Network, there are about 250 individual members in the eight angel groups in the Philadelphia area. Two of them have formed within the last 18 months.
What's prompting such groups to proliferate? In part, the decline in the number of venture funds focused on seed and early-stage investing. Angel investors have always had a role in investing at the earliest stages of companies' development. They seem more conspicuous by the absence of the venture funds.
For example, Compliance Assurance Corp., a Pittsburgh-based financial-software company, raised $1.25 million last month from several groups, including West Philadelphia's Robin Hood Ventures, an angel group that led the round. Delaware Crossing Investor Group, of Doylestown, and Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, of South Philadelphia, also participated.
Members of Robin Hood invest as a group, putting $250,000 to $500,000 into a $1 million to $2 million round of investment. Since 1999, the group has invested $12.7 million in 33 companies.
Keiretsu Forum does not operate a fund. The 850 investors who are members through its chapters invest as individuals. Investment rounds range from $250,000 to $2 million. Randy Williams, who founded the group in San Francisco in 2000, said members had invested more than $285 million in 265 companies worldwide.
Another recent West Coast transplant to the Philadelphia angel community is Investors' Circle Philadelphia, which now has about a dozen members, according to Tom Balderston, a Radnor investor. While Keiretsu will examine all sorts of industry sectors, including real estate, Investors' Circle is focused on companies addressing social and environmental issues.
