UK investors band together to survey Angels on their strategy during COVID-19 – TechCrunch

A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups.

The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment community actionable data in order that they might be able to make critical decisions during the UK’s pandemic lockdown and in a “post-COVID-19” world.

The organizations involved include 7percent Ventures, Forward Partners, Portfolio Ventures, ICE, Foundrs, Punk Money, Humanity, Culture Gene, Barndance, Bindi Karia and Stakeholderz. The initiative was started by Nick Thain the former CEO and co-founder of GiveMeSport, which was acquired last year.

Speaking to TechCrunch, Thain criticized the “Future Fund” introduced by the British Business Bank, saying it “fails to adequately address the funding requirements of startup businesses that fall below the £250k investment threshold. These businesses traditionally rely on investment from the UK’s active Angel investors.” He says the survey will “aim to measure the appetite of investment in early-stage businesses, and what can be done to improve the situation for these organizations.”

Activate our Angels is an anonymous survey designed to answer these core questions: Are Angels Investing now? If not, when will they start again (e.g. Q4 etc)? If yes, then what has changed (e.g. deal terms, valuations, types of businesses)?

Thain explained that founders need to know if they should “triple down on contacting Angels now”; look for a change in the terms of investments; or hold and plan for much later, taking the pandemic era into account.

“We want Angels to know the answer to ‘What are other Angels doing during this crisis?’. Are they following the crowd, or taking their own investment path,” he said.

The survey will run for the next few days and the results will be published on TechCrunch.