The World is an Angel's Oyster
Brian Perry
28-Aug-06
When angel investing first started, chances were pretty good any investment being made was fairly close to home. Even with excellent travel infrastructure over the past several decades, angels still generally like to invest close to home and within a 100 mile radius.
Here we are in the middle of 2006. Are things any different today? Would you be willing to invest in a software start-up from India? A property development in Bulgaria? A restaurant chain franchise in Birmingham? Have travel costs come down so much in price over the past few years that taking frequent trips to a destination abroad to check up on your investment it isn’t considered a problem? Has the internet sped up the way business is done so much that this helps you to monitor your investment easier?
Personally, I think things have changed a great deal over the past few years alone. I am seeing more and more cross border types of angel investment. As long as you know the people involved, enough about the industry and opportunity and potential pitfalls of any geographical investment, an angel investment deal is an angel investment deal.
Now, with that being said, it certainly does have its drawback to investing outside of your local area. It isn’t as easy as getting in your car and driving down the road to do a “drive by” every so often. The added planning and travel costs need to be factored into any deal you do. Treat these sorts of investments no different and make sure that if you do invest afar, make certain you can budget your time and costs to nurture it like any other one.
When the majority of the general public invest in traditional markets, and for the most part, they don’t have a clue where their investment is going. They heavily rely on their financial advisor to make sound investment decisions but have little regard for where their money goes. I would be very surprised if any more than a small fraction of the “traditional investment market” population a. knows all the companies within their investment or retirement portfolios and b. if they know where these companies are even based. From this perspective, angel investing is light years ahead in terms of understanding and knowing where your money is going.
I recently invested in a software development project based in Canada and to eventually launch and operate within the United States while I live in the UK. Perhaps because software and the internet are global in nature, International or regional boundaries are easily removed when making angel investments.
Does it mean I would invest in a café in the busiest corner Piazza of Rome, probably not today but tomorrow, who knows.
