The Venture Alley - A blog about business and legal issues important to entrepreneurs, startups, venture capitalists and angel investors.

CONTRIBUTED BYTrent Dykestrent.dykes@dlapiper.com The Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights recently released their angel group update 2012 year in review, the Halo Report. The Halo Report analyzes angel investment activity and trends in the United States. Here are a couple interesting 2012 highlights: The median angel round size was $600K; The median angel round size was $1.5M when angel groups co-invest with other types of investors; The median pre-money valuation for early stage angel group deals was $2.5M; 63% of angel group deals were in companies with revenue; 56% of angel group deals were in new companies; 11% of 2012... More

CONTRIBUTED BYTrent Dykestrent.dykes@dlapiper.com Today the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights released their angel group update for Q3 2012, the Halo Report. The Halo Report analyzes angel investment activity and trends in the United States. Here are a couple interesting highlights: The median angel round size was $640K; The median angel round size was $1.59M when angel groups co-invest with other types of investors; The median pre-money valuation for early stage angel group deals was $2.6M; California was the most active region for angel deals, both in number of deals (21.4%) and total dollars invested (28.0%); and The top three... More

CONTRIBUTED BYMegan Muirmegan.muir@dlapiper.com  Although the dollar amounts may be relatively small, there is increasing competition for early stage startup investments that is driving up valuations.  Paul Graham talked about this phenomenon at Y Combinator's annual Startup School (see here for Graham's presentation).  VCs are making some small seed investments in dollar amounts you'd typically see from angels, creating pressure on other investors to get in a deal quickly and allowing founders to push valuations higher.  Dow Jones VentureWire reporter Tomio Geron has a good summary here. The speed with which deals are getting done allows the founders to get back to work building their company and less time fundraising,... More