Angel Group Onboarding

Onboarding an angel group is comprised of four phases:

Phase 1: Onboard Executive Team & Build Applications

Phase 2: Onboard Members

Phase 3: Onboard Portfolio and then set up Perks, & E-Learning

Phase 4: Continuing Education

These phases can be combined or shortened depending on the needs of the group.

Phase 1: Onboard Executive Team & Build Applications

Information needed:

1. Executive Team Emails for inviting
2. Landing Page information for Startup, Membership, and Mentor application (if applicable)
3. Timeline
4. Startup Application Questions and/or People Application Questions
5. Credit Card

We focus the first phase on getting the executive team onboarded and comfortable with the system.

Sparkxyz’s onboarding specialist will walk them through each of the different sections and start their applications.

The team should come prepared with the information necessary for creating the Landing Page for their startup, membership, and mentor applications.

We will also invite the executive team during this meeting, so please come prepared with their email addresses.

The specialist will give the team a week to play around with the system and answer any questions. During that week, the team must discuss how they want to construct their diligence. The executive team should determine how their diligence is built and what questions should be asked before the subsequent meeting.

During the subsequent meeting, they will complete the below steps for the applications:

1. Timeline
2. Application Fees (if applicable)
3. Startup Application Questions
4. People Application Questions

Phase 1 Complete: Executive team onboarded & applications built

Phase 2: Onboarding Members

Information Needed:

1. Member email addresses
2. Next screening meeting date

Phase 2 is focused on getting the highest conversion rate and best experience possible for members joining the platform.

One week prior to your next large meeting (typically an all member group diligence meeting) we will send out a version of the below email and then send individual invites to each member.

Dear Angel Group Members,

We wanted to say a huge “thank you” to our Executive Team members who conducted their first meeting entirely in the Spark xyz platform on Friday, and to (SPECIALIST NAME) from Spark xyz for leading us through each step of the process. Overall, we had a very positive and efficient experience. We look forward to our future with Spark!

As we prepare for our upcoming (EVENT NAME), we want to begin the process onboarding all of our members into the Spark xyz platform. Our goal right now is to simply have members enrolled in the platform. That’s it! This requires one easy step from you:

1. Soon, you will receive an automated invitation from Admin@sparkxyz.io. Once you receive your email invite, please create your account. Once setup, (ADD A LINK TO YOUR COLLECTIVE HOMEPAGE) this link will be the virtual platform for all of the Forum deals each cycle. (Be sure to scan all of your inbox folders.)
2. Have additional questions about the Spark platform/want to get a head start on learning more? (SPECIALIST NAME) also sent plenty of helpful resources over for our group. A friendly reminder that all we need you to do at this time is to accept the invitation and setup your account in the system.

Common Questions

1. Common Questions
2. Creating a New Member Profile
3. Finding your Collective (Incubator, Accelerator, Angel Group, VC, Etc.)
4. Finding A Specific Deal
5. Finding Deals at Specific Stages
6. Live Applications: Judging
7. New Member Log In (Video)
8. New Member High Level Overview (Video)
9. Sparkxyz Demo (Video)
10. Complete FAQ

Pro-Tips:

1. If you are having trouble logging in, try resetting your password on the site.

2. Check spam if you do not see the invite as the invite most likely has gone there. It will have come from Admin@sparkxyz.io

The email that the member receives looks like the below screenshot

Additional tips:

1. If you have members that use MSN, Yahoo or an old personal domain we will need to use a different tactic for onboarding them. SendGrid (the largest provider for backend email) doesn’t support MSN or Yahoo as they are just too old and very few people still use them. This means we cannot support them through invites. What we do instead is have them create an account on Sparkxyz, and then we add them as a user instead of inviting. It is a subtle difference but a step we must take to ensure a smooth onboarding.
2. The invite token only lasts for two weeks before it expires. If it expires the user will have to do a password reset to get into the system.

Phase 3: Onboard Portfolio, set up Perks, & E-Learning

The final phase is focused on getting your portfolio onboarded, adding your perks/ partnerships, and creating your self starter learning library. See the below guides and demo’s for each section.

Portfolio

Display your portfolio with ease. Add your portfolio companies venture profiles under manage portfolio.

Create categories and then drag and drop them to the appropriate category. (Do not drag by the logo or it will not register)

Use the URL of this page to link to your website or send to other interested parties. If the other party is not a member of your collective the only visible portion of this page will be Companies, Jobs & Categories. Example: Amplite Capital

If you want to leverage the jobs board, have your founders add a job description to their venture profile page and list this page on your website. They can use Linkedin, Angellist, Etc.

Demo Video: Manage Portfolio

Perks

The Sparkxyz perks listed are exclusively for your members and portfolio companies. Members can access the perk by clicking the logo and then clicking redeem.

For portfolio companies to access the perks, you must add their venture under the portfolio tab. Once they have accepted the portfolio invite (if they are pending, the restriction will not lift), have them click on perks in the top navigation, and they can see all perks available to them.

Perks Management

The perks you add will only be visible to members and portfolio companies (once added and accepted). They are not for the consumption of the greater Sparkxyz community. If your portfolio companies or yourselves have a perk you would like to add, please use this application: Apply Here

Demo Video: Perks E-Learning

E-Learning

On the left-hand navigation side, you’ll see two sets of categories:

1. Member-only Categories are for members of your collective. Build a library for running diligence, code of conduct, etc.
2. The second is for the portfolio companies. For the cohort-based collectives, you can add weekly topics or build the categories by section: Sales, Fundraising, Technical, etc.

Make sure to build out your categories before adding entries.

Under the Manage tab, click +E-learning button to add a new entry!

Demo Video: E-Learning

Phase 4: Continuing Education

During the initial onboarding angel groups will capture around 70–80% of their members. For larger groups, there are always stragglers for adopting new technology.

A best practice that one of our clients put into place is for the first couple of months, they had an internal champion lead a weekly call to help answer questions and get the stragglers onboarded.

We encourage this best practice as their group had 100% adoption.