Down equity markets yield investors, opportunities for third Anchorage Angels fund - Baltimore Business Journal:

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And, he said, this might be one of the most promisinyg periodsfor early-stage investment group such as his Anchoragr Angels. Anchorage Angels recently closed its third Anchorage AngelsIII LLC, said Chapman, who is managing membetr of the 10-year-old private investment fund. Although Chapmah declined to give specifics, he described Anchoragew Angels III as the largesg of the three funds created since with wellover $1 million raised. Chapma n said that although there are no immediate plans for an additional thefund “has flexibilituy to increase its size.” Tough times, but big opportunitied Anchorage Angels III already has invested in six companies, which he decline to identify.
The new fund will invest acrosz theUnited States, Chapman said. Anchoragew Angels’ typical maximum investment isabout $150,000 to limit the exposurwe in individual companies, he said. But it has investefd as much as $200,000 in a single companyg through multiple funding rounds and as littleeas $25,000. So how hard is it to get investor to fork over perhaps hundredz of thousands of dollars during what mightt be the depths of the worst downturnsince 1929? Tough, Chapmanm said. “It’s extremely difficultg to raise money in this he said. It takes longer, with endless meetings and Chapman said. “But we have a record.
We have a trackm record of making money in reallycrummy environments.” The 2009 investingh environment is “the opposite” of when Anchorage Angels raised its first money in 2000, he During that go-go environment, with the possibilityy of taking companies public, there were lots of and all them were expensive, Chapman said. That is, there was so much investof money chasing deals that the terms were not as favorablesfor investors. “What you see (now) are very interestingy tech plays at veryinteresting valuations,” he Valuations are lower, deals are plentiful and managementt teams are better and more seasoned, he said.
Anothefr difference from past years is that more investors many of whom have becomew disillusionedwith public-equity markets are coming to Anchorage Angelds to learn the private-capital business. “They say, ‘I sold my I have cash to invest, and I want to learb how this gameis played,’ ” Chapmaj said. There’s a wealth of opportunity right now for entrepreneurin early-stage companies, including in health care and energy, said Sean co-founder and CEO of Louisville-based Genscape trackws utility energy output for brokers, and it’s one of the companiee in which Anchorage Angelzs invested.
The recession has meant that a lot of professionalws havebeen “forced to thinki about what to do with thei r lives, and they’re talking risks they wouldn’t ordinarily be starting new companies, said O’Leary, who also is a current Anchoragw Angels investor.