The Band of Angels was the first high technology specific angel investment group in the United States. Today the group remains very active with more than 160 members who invest their time and money into high tech
startup companies
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
. Band members have founded companies such as
Cirrus Logic
Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas.
The company's audio processo ...
,
Symantec,
SunPower
SunPower is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 by Richard Swa ...
,
National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor was an American semiconductor manufacturer which specialized in analog devices and subsystems, formerly with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. The company produced power management integrated circuits, display drive ...
and
Logitech
Logitech International S.A. ( ; often shortened to Logi) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software, with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and Newark, California. The company has offices throughout Europe, ...
, and have been senior executive officers at top
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
companies including
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
,
Hewlett Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
,
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
,
3Com
3Com Corporation was an American digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney and others. Bill Krause joined as President in 1981. Metcalfe ex ...
and
Intuit
Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...
. Numerous articles have been written about the Band, appearing in periodicals such as ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
, Upside, Red Herring'', ''
Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'', ''
U.S. News & World Report'', and ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
''. The Band has also been featured in two
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...
case studies.
Background
Band members invest in deals directly; there is no pooling of resources or voting. Since 1994, Band members have invested over $186 million into over 200 startup companies. Thirteen deals that presented to the Band as seed investments became public companies; these alone returned $240M in cash to Band members and 63 other companies in the Band's portfolio have been acquired for a gain. Assuming an exit at lock-up expiration, this corresponds to a 53% annualized
internal rate of return
Internal rate of return (IRR) is a method of calculating an investment’s rate of return. The term ''internal'' refers to the fact that the calculation excludes external factors, such as the risk-free rate, inflation, the cost of capital, or fin ...
(IRR).
The Band of Angels is active, investing in 16-22 deals per year as well as many follow-on pro rata investments into current portfolio companies. It consistently ranks among the top 10 most active VCs in the annual listing of the top 100 by ''
Entrepreneur Magazine
''Entrepreneur'' is an American magazine and website that carries news stories about entrepreneurship, small business management, and business. The magazine was first published in 1977. It is published by ''Entrepreneur Media Inc''., headquartere ...
''. The Band specializes in diverse, early-stage venture investing. The portfolio is distributed among biotech, semiconductor, networking, telecom, medical device, enterprise software, Internet, high-tech services, and even industrial, companies. Every investment receives active post-deal participation from a Band member, including joining the board of directors where possible.
Securing funding from the Band is competitive. Approximately 50 deals submit each month for funding from the group. Every deal that submits is reviewed and analyzed by 6 domain experts; the top ten companies that apply each month are invited in to an in person interview and the best three from this group are then invited to present at the next available Band dinner. Typically, the odds of being funded after presenting to the Band is 1/3.
The Band was founded by J. C. Hans Severiens and the current chairman is Dr. Ian Sobieski.
In 2004 The
Angel Capital Association Angel Capital Association (ACA) is the official industry alliance of over 100 of the largest angel investor groups in the United States. Since its founding in 2004, it has played a significant role in bringing together the previously separate angel ...
established the Hans Severiens Award
/ref> to recognize one person each year for outstanding accomplishments in the advancement of angel investing.
See also
* Glen McLaughlin
References
External links
Clavier Blog Article
{{Authority control
Venture capital firms of the United States
Companies based in Menlo Park, California