Seattle Angel Conference XV Workshops

The Seattle Angel Conference XV is kicking off with a set of workshops around Startups and Angel Investing.

Each cycle of the Angel Conference, we explore many of the issues related to startups that are looking at taking outside funding and the investors who would invest in them.  This cycle we are Seattle side, doing many of our workshops at UW CoMotion on Roosevelt. Our program matches new Angel Investors with early stage companies to help everyone make a giant step forward on their efforts.

Given that 15% of the people between 45 and 65 are accredited and thereby allowed to invest in startups by Federal Law, we expect that each of you knows someone who is accredited , but is unaware of what that might mean to them. Our goal is to double the number of people making investments into our startup ecosystem. If you know a startup seeking early stage funding (pre-seed of $150K ) , please invite them to come to the workshops. If you know an accredited person, who might consider learning  more about Angel Investing, please invite them to the workshops.

Below, I have highlighted the workshops for this round. You can find all of these at http://meetup.com/Seattle-Angel . Let me highlight the workshop on February 12th about the Indie.vc termsheet. It promises to open up the conversation about how more companies can find outside funding using a different model of investment.  Please help us spread the word about these workshops. 

The deadline for companies to apply to the workshop is on February 28th. Applications should go here: http://sac-xv-apply.eventbrite.com

Workshops:

Startup Financials with Kathleen Baxley
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Learn how viewing your business through a "number lens" can improve decision making, and which tools should be considered at different stages of growth. As a business, part of your task is to build a model of the business. Having that financial model provides you with the foundation to raise funds, predict troubles, and otherwise survive as a company.

Pitch deconstruction with Javier Soto , Elaine Werffeli, and Yoko Okano
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

During this Pitch Deconstruction workshop, any of the companies that come will have the chance to give their 1-minute pitch. The audience will then vote for who they would like to hear more from, and those winners (typically 5-6) will then give 3-minute pitches. Note: The 1-minute pitches should not include slides. The 3-minute pitches can include a slide deck.

We'll have active investors at the event to provide general feedback to all of these 1-minute pitches and more direct feedback for the 3-minute pitches.

Startup Legal Agreements with Daniel Neuman
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

How does your startup set a good foundation, so that as you move into fundraising, you have the key pieces in place. We will discuss how to properly set up your startup to be ready to take on VC and angel investments. This would include discussing the various documents regarding incorporation (vs. forming an LLC), board and stockholder consents, founder stock issuances, employees/contractors, IP, customer contracts, terms of services and privacy policy, etc.

We will also look at a due diligence request list for a typical early stage financing. This will help to frame the foundations that need to be built for your startup.

Angel 101 with Elaine Werffeli
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Angel Investing is its own kind of process. It has different characteristics than most investing. To learn more about Angel Investing, we recommend the book by David S Rose called " Angel Investing".

There are key things to know about Angel Investing, which when done well can make this an interesting asset class for investment.

Evaluation of Indie VC Terms with Luni Libes + Geoff Harris
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

One of the four critical factors of a venture investment is the structure of the deal. The traditional Preferred Equity agreement or the newer Convertible notes or SAFE Agreements all focus on a specific kind of company. There are a small number of companies that these structures support. The folks at Indie.vc have come up with a set of deal terms that provide an new set of deal terms, which open up a significantly different set of opportunities. These terms have a lot in common with the Equity Redemption deal terms that Luni Libes has been using at Fledge.co, a local impact company accelerator. We will have a discussion by Luni Libes of Fledge and Geoff Harris of Flying Fish Capital about the pros and cons of the Indie.vc terms.

Calculating Dilution with Carter Mackley
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

In the beginning, the founders of a company own all of the stock. As they take outside funds and sell stock, each round dilutes the current stock owners. Overly zealous Angel Investors and misplaced donations of stock to vendors can lead to unexpected results later in the process.

Carter Mackley will walk through the process of understanding stock dilution, cap table calculations and the ways that Startup Founders need to track the process of framing their rounds of outside funding.

See more at : http://meetup.com/Seattle-Angel

The Angel Conference has a 12 week program from February 26th to May 15th, where the companies and the investors engage and on May 15th the investors will select a company to invest in.

By using this model over the last 7 years, we have invested in 29 companies with over 350 new investors learning the process.  Please help us spread the word about these workshops and about the Angel Conference process.

For more details about the process, take a look at http://seattleangelconference.com