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5.0 Tough Business, Good People
Fund: New Vantage Group
Posted by Anonymous on 2010-11-11
We pitched and were funded in a round led by the D’Archangels / Active Angels managed by the New Vantage Group in February 2010. I think the frustration indicated in these posts is a product of the fact that managing angel groups is like herding cats and the range of fields in which the individual angels were successful means that there are a lot of perspectives and hot buttons for the New Vantage management and the pitching entrepreneur to contend with. Imagine pitching to and trying to build an investment syndicate for a cutting edge software business from a government services sales guy, a consumer products entrepreneur, a corporate lawyer, and a celebrity chef. Even tougher when the investors have lost half of their portfolio in the public markets.
I raised over $20M in my previous company, including during the down markets of 2001-02. In 2010, I thought New Vantage was fair in their dealings with us, deliberate, and relatively efficient. Certainly no less so than regular VC’s with ‘billions under management’ and bigger staffs. The only real frustration was finalizing the final investment amount as more angels in the group decided to invest – not a terrible problem to have. New Vantage also introduced us to other angel groups outside the area who immediately joined in because of the strong relationship with New Vantage and reputation of John May.
John May and Dan Mindus were accessible during the deal and good people to work with. Dan led the deal sourcing and syndication, deal structuring, due diligence, and successfully closing of a seven figure investment in a difficult economic and funding climate. Dan was knowledgeable, creative, and driven to find common ground between the investor syndicate and the prospective portfolio company management to get the deal closed in a timely fashion. And through all this, Dan demonstrated a rare quality in venture capitalists, he was easy to work with and demonstrated common sense.
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