Imagine flipping on your computer, dialing your friendly Internet Service Provider and a few keystrokes later be able to put your business name in front of angels with cold cash to invest in hot new and growing businesses?
Believe it or not, that isn't just a pipe dream. Thanks to an initiative sponsored by The U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, small businesses looking for capital can hook up on the Internet with angels looking for good investments.
The place to do it is the SBA's Office of Advocacy Angel Capital Electronic Network (ACE-Net). What ACE-Net is, is a computer web site that lets small business owners put their prospectus on the Internet and lets accredited angel investors search for businesses that match their investing interests. Searches can be conducted by type of company, technology/market, investment size, geographic location, and minority-/women-owned status of the company. Angels will also be able to place specific search criteria on the network, and it will e-mail them back whenever a company is listed that meets their interests. The listing of potential business investments will be available for examination only by accredited angel investors via password.
Find out who's investing in what and how much they're investing. Get the Growthink's latest quarterly venture capital funding reports
.
ACE-Net was created to address one of the major issues pointed up by the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business - the availability of loans for businesses that need between $250,000 and $5 million in capital. In other words, more than they can fund themselves from their own pockets or from friends and family, but smaller than the type of deals that interest venture capitalists. It will make it easier for small businesses and investors to look for matches on a national basis.
ACE-Net was developed with input from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), state securities regulators, and their national professional organization, the North American Securities Administrators' Association (NASAA). As a result, it will permit listings to be in accordance with federal and state securities laws. Other organizations that have experience matching angels and entrepreneurs were involved too. These included including the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire and individual network operators (not-for-profit organizations, often state- or university-based).
To gain access to ACE-Net, entrepreneurs and angels have to work through a regional network operator. Two were open for business in February 1997. They were the Technology Capital Network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and The Capital Network, Inc., Austin, Texas. Six other network operators are expected to open within a year. Those are: the Accelerate Technology Small Business Development Center at the University of California-Irvine; UCSD-CONNECT in San Diego; The North Carolina Biotechnology Center in Research Triangle Park; The Ben Franklin Partnership in Philadelphia; The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation in Topeka; and The Advanced Technology Development Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
More details about ACE-Net are available at both the SBA web site (http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov) and the ACE-Net web site (http://www.ace-net.sr.unh.edu/pub/).
Copyright 1997 Janet Attard
Attard@businessknowhow.com