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Three former executives from a local company that researches and promotes small companies have launched a website to help match “angel” investors with startup companies that fit their interests and expertise.
Invertual.com includes profiles of 37 startups from Arizona and Colorado that the site can match with the investment criteria from 36 angel investors and more than 300 groups of such investors, said Mark Labertew, CEO of Invertual Inc., which developed the site (http://www.invertual.com/) during the last 17 months. He, Jeff Thomas and Delray Wannemacher, all former executives of Colorado Springs-based Accredited Members Inc., have invested $250,000 since October 2010 to get the site up and running and attract investors and startups.
“Investors have told us it takes too much time to find companies that meet their criteria,” said Drew Wolman, an account executive with Invertual. “We send investors a list of companies and how well they meet their criteria and they can either choose to follow that company on our site or through social media or contact the company through the site. Under (Securities and Exchange Commission) regulations, investors must initiate the contact, and this system also works to avoid spam e-mails from either side.”
Angel investors are wealthy individuals who pump between $10,000 and $100,000 in startups at the earliest stages, when a technology or product is little more than an idea in an entrepreneur’s business plan. Invertual hopes within two years to attract up to 150,000 startups and 250,000 angel investors.
Companies pay $39 a month to be listed on Invertual, where they are sorted by location, industry, amount of financing they are seeking and how close the company is to producing revenue; investors get free access to the site.
“I’ve watched so many new companies with the right product and right approaches simply evaporate due to a lack of access to basic investment capital through their funding cycles,” said Jan Horsfall, a local entrepreneur and angel investor. “Invertual knocks down many of the barriers which get in the way of these transactions.”
Many of the initial companies and investors that have signed up for Invertual were recruited from Peak Venture Group, an entrepreneur support group, and High Altitude Investors, an organization affiliated with the Colorado Springs Technology Incubator that helps connect angel investors with startups.
“There are at least two other large competitors that operate similar types of sites, but we are the only one that matches startups and investors rather than asking investors to search through a list of companies on their own,” Labertew said. “We also have a feature that allows all members of an investment group, such as High Altitude Investors, to have access to the same information about individual companies and privately discuss or share information about that company either by a web conference or online chat.”
Invertual eventually hopes to expand by launching a second venue for startups to attract financing from smaller investors through “crowdfunding,” in which companies seek small amounts of money through the web without the expense of an initial public stock offering, Labertew said. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama this month, will allow small companies to raise up to $1 million from small investors once regulations are adopted by the SEC, likely sometime early next year.
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Contact Wayne Heilman: 636-0234 Twitter @wayneheilman
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