Here is a book that talks about some interesting facts about Angel funding in America. Anita Campbell has done a good job reviewing the book on her website – smallbiztrends.com

By Anita Campbell 

If you’ve ever thought about seeking angel investment capital for your business, there’s a good chance you will start the process with some misconceptions.  Same goes if you are thinking of becoming an angel to invest in other businesses.

For instance, you may have had the notion that individual angels are rich — or at least very well off — and invest a lot of money in each business.  Not necessarily so, says the new book “Fool’s Gold: The Truth Behind Angel Investing in America.”

I recommend you spend some quality time with this book if you are interested in seeking angel funding. It could save you some mis-starts and get you pointed in the right direction faster.

What You Will Get From This Book

Fool’s Gold is by Scott Shane, one of our Small Business Trends Experts who publishes something new here nearly every Monday morning.  Those of you who are regular readers recognize Scott as someone always ready with the facts. Often those facts are contrary to popular belief or common wisdom. Very often he floats a provocative idea that challenges you to think.

And so it is with his new book.

This is a book stuffed full of facts and study data. If you wanted to know, say, whether your retail business is a good candidate for angel investing, the book will tell you (answer: yes, 25% of angel investments are made in retail businesses).

You might wonder how a book of facts and data could help you as an entrepreneur. That’s easy. From information gleaned you can get a much better idea of such things as:

• why angels invest (it may be as much about having a hobby as making money)
• how angels decide on which businesses to invest in (with less investigation than you’d expect)
• how angel investors come up with valuations and what kind of ownership interest they will expect (most don’t do formal valuations and they demand smaller ownership stakes than you might expect)
• where and how to find angel investors (hint: look locally)

All of these things will help you understand how to appeal to angel investors.  I put together the following chart with a handful of the many misconceptions and the corresponding real facts, so you can see the kind of information the book can give you (this is a small sampling):

What I Liked About This Book

I loved the writing style. It’s crisp and direct. Scott gets right to the point. And despite the many figures and statistics scattered throughout, it’s relatively easy to read and comprehend.

Plus, the information is practical and “real world” — no ivory towers approach.

One of the best features — one that more books should have — is a summary at the end of every chapter, called “Key Facts to Remember.” It’s just that — Scott summarizes the key take-away facts about angel investing.

One Thing to Know About This Book

The book is published by Oxford University Press and as you might guess from that, is a scholarly book. It is scrupulously researched with sources noted. The last 40 pages of the book are bibliography pointing to the angel investing studies and information sources cited throughout the book. 

My only thought is that it would help to have the research sources in a list somewhere online. Reason? Many of the sources cited are Web resources with long URLs. They are difficult to key in manually.

However, for most people this won’t matter as most won’t look up the sources. Most of us will get all that we need to know just by reading the book.
 
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