Does a fund make sense for us as an investment vehicle? How do other networks do it? At our year-end event, we learned about different approaches. We also dealt with the question of how big the crisis mood is for investments in startups and how to deal with problems in your own investments as a business angel.
Deepening one’s own knowledge in the field of StartUp Investments and exchanging ideas with other investors in an atmosphere that explicitly allows personal conversations – this is the focus of the Baltic Business Angels Masterclasses. Also this year, our year-end event took place over one and a half days in a newly opened first-class hotel in Schleswig-Holstein.
In the River Loft Hotel & Spa we started on Friday with the first part of the program on the topic of Business Angels Funds. In Berlin and Brandenburg, the local Business Angels Club has already created an active fund with its investment company. Martin R. Huber, Managing Director of the Business Angel Club Berlin-Brandenburg Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, gave us a closer look. The main motivation was to offer an ideal entry point for members to learn in the circle of experienced angels how start-up investments work and to offer the opportunity to participate in a variety of attractive start-ups with minimal time investment.
Pia Boni and Sebastian Megow from the Business Club Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e.V. told us how Baltic Incubate, as the first business angels network in the „fake“ north, invests together in startups. It was a very pleasant and interesting exchange and we definitely want to use further opportunities to expand the contact.
Eckart Koerner operates Angel Investments and successful fund management with Angel Invest GmbH. The portfolio currently comprises 100 companies and will grow to over 150 companies by the end of ’23. The fund managers look at about 50 deals per investment. It therefore needs a deal flow of over 1,500 companies per year. This comes primarily from the network of
founders and co-investors. The combination of fund investments with the possibility of direct investments in the portfolio is a very attractive combination for Angel Invest when investing in startups.