Divine Data on Angel Investors

The road to building a successful business is a long one indeed, but the most difficult part of the journey is often the first step: securing the funding to get started.

The cold hard fact is that it takes cold hard cash to build a business. You can’t invest time and effort into securing clients and establishing a brand without first investing capital into supporting all that time and effort. While some lucky few have a hefty inheritance or enormous savings account to bankroll their own dreams, the rest of us have to turn to pitch our projects to those with the will and the wealth to make them come true.

Support from friends and family is always appreciated to get the ball rolling, and Venture Capitalists are a wonderful way to take a small business to the next level, but for those in the space between, there are Angel Investors.

Our CEO Ally Spinu has a wonderful article with more information on what distinguishes the different kinds of investors, but in this article, we’d like to explore what makes Angel Investors stand out.

A study released by the Angel Capital Association went over the data and came back with some very impressive figures. For starters, women make up 22.1% of the of the Angel Investing Community in the Unites states, as well as 30% of those who’ve started since 2014. That may not seem like much, but remembering that there’s only about 5% of women in the venture Capitalist Community, which itself has dropped from 10% back in 1999, it really puts the percentage in perspective.

The difference in gender between the two groups translates to a difference in investments as well. While Angel Investors tend to back more unique start-ups than Venture Capitalist to begin with, women investors tend to support more progressive projects than men. Women investors are eight times more likely to consider the gender of the project founders as an important factor, but they’re twice as likely take the social impact of their projects into account as well.

Women want to put their money behind other women, especially those trying to make a difference in the world, and it’s working. Female or mixed gender founded start-ups were 63% more successful at acquiring investors than exclusively male founded start-ups. Seeing as about 55% of Angel Investors were CEOs of their own companies, it makes sense that those who’ve worked so hard to break through the glass ceiling would want to help those coming after them have an easier time.

Mind you, it’s more than just women making leaps and bounds. Nearly 10% of Angel Investors are people of color, and their support of more diverse start-ups helps teams and projects that are all too often marginalized finally get their chance to shine.

Export Portal is proud to provide a trusted hub for small businesses around the world to establish themselves and connect with one another, after all, the more people given the opportunity to prove themselves, the more heavenly this world we live in becomes.