Local angel investor group merges with national funding network

BOULDER – Impact Angel Group, an investment group geared toward early-stage startups with the potential to make positive social and environmental impacts, announced on Monday that it has become the Colorado division of Investors’ Circle, a national funding network with similar goals.

Founded in 2011 by Elizabeth Kraus, Boulder-based Impact Angel Group will change its name to Investors’ Circle Colorado.

“It broadens the reach for our members,” Kraus said in a phone interview. “It will be much easier for us to see investments on a national scale now. It will also help us bring (out-of-state) capital to Colorado companies because we’re part of a much larger organization with more investors who have more capital behind them.”

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Kraus founded Impact Angel Group with a small group of friends who were investing together. As the group grew, it became a formal organization in 2013 with a couple of main missions. The first was to screen impact investment opportunities and present those to members. The second was to provide education and community building for startups and angel investors.

Members of IAG – there are about 50 – invested on their own, and IAG also had a group fund that invested in various startups. IAG members in 2013 – from August, when the group became a formal organization, to the end of the year – invested $700,000 in 10 different startups, including Rapt Media and Tusaar.

Investors’ Circle, based in Durham, N.C., is a non-profit organization that also focuses on connecting impact angel investors with investment opportunities. IC members have invested more than $185 million into 285 enterprises. IC has regional networks in Philadelphia, New York, North Carolina, San Francisco and Boston.

As part of that larger organization, IC Colorado members will still focus intently on finding sound local impact investments. But if one of the startups they invest in locally grows to the point where it’s seeking a larger funding round, IC Colorado can now help get that startup’s founders in front of the national group. Conversely, IC Colorado members will have access to opportunities elsewhere presented by IC’s other local organizations.

Investors’ Circle holds national events quarterly where about a dozen of the best local investment opportunities are brought together to pitch in front of IC’s full range of angel investors. IC executive director Bonny Moellenbrock said about 50 percent of the local companies that have been able to pitch at the national events have received funding.

“Having these groups in regions, looking at deals and meeting entrepreneurs in person is crucial to getting capital flowing,” Moellenbrock said.

Kraus said IAG members had wanted to have some sort of national affiliation early on in the group’s formation but didn’t have the critical mass needed locally. But impact investing has gained serious traction, not only in Colorado but globally, in recent years.

A JP Morgan and Global Impact Investing Network survey of dozens of the world’s largest impact investors in May revealed that those investors expected to commit 19 percent more toward impact investments in 2014 than they did in 2013. They also anticipated a 31 percent increase in the number of deals backed.

“We’ve seen big growth in Colorado,” Kraus said.