A fulfilling breakfast at Iratel Ventures
Iratel Ventures holds an event called “IV Breakfast series” on every last Thursday of each month. This event is held to prepare an opportunity for startups, investors and other players of Iran and global startup ecosystem to communicate and share their ideas regarding the topic of meeting, which is selected with lean coffee method.
I attended this meeting last Thursday, and because I found it very productive and helpful this made me to write about it. Theme of the meeting was angel investing. Three topics were suggested and “investor-startup fit” was chosen as the best. it’s going to be continued next time with this topic: “startup funding value chain”. The atmosphere of the meeting was interactive and friendly. It was moderated by Mohsen Khakhali, Managing Partner at Iratel Ventures and a founding member of Banian angel investors, very smartly.
I believe venues like IV breakfast series are very helpful and lead to a vibrant and growing startup community. Now I’ll move on to the topics that were discussed in January breakfast debate.
At first, investors pointed out important items about startups they are intended to invest in. They mentioned their expectations and some challenges startups pitching them are facing. Then, startups talked about their favorite investor. Some startups who have raised fund from Angels talked about their experiences. Proper investor from startups point of view is demonstrated in a spectrum; it varies from just giving money, empathy with founders, mentorship and networking for them. At the same time, angels are positioned in a spectrum; some of them are very active and focusing on angel investing but some of them are very busy and tend to be follower of other angels in the deal. Both startups and angels are looking for the proper match in the deal, so for startups it’s really important to have meeting with different investors and finally select the most suitable investor. For investors it’s important to see lots of deals and cut their checks for the deals they are interested in and probably have experience with.
In my opinion one important topic that wasn’t brought up is the question of “Is it right to expect an angel investor to provide networking for startups freely?” which is a common belief in Iran startup ecosystem.
“Is it right to expect an angel investor to provide networking for startups freely?”
I request all of you to think about question above.
