Do Big Brother do not want to vote brother Angel

Li Jing Ying

Early start-up Investors are the wish of every entrepreneur, but sometimes that kind of concern is an undeveloped burden on entrepreneurs.

Recently, Wu Xu (a pseudonym) has got a bit of annoyance. A round of financing, which was originally started smoothly this year after the end of this year, is in a sudden turnaround. The reason for the change is that the angel investor and the VC side took a direct part in the project investment conflict. "Both sides want to compete when the leader of Round A, no one will give in, and I am caught in the middle of a dilemma." Wu Xu is helpless.

Angel wants to vote

Wu Xu, a technical background, once had the experience of serving as a technology executive in one of the world's top 500 companies. Since early last year, he has stepped out of the stable system of large enterprises to start a business. In the middle of last year, Wu Xu won an investment from angel investment institutions, and most of the funds were spent on technology research and development. Seeing the technology tends to be stable, the downstream partners have already agreed, after the test of hardware equipment has also reached a large-scale market to the stage, but companies can not afford the book production costs.

To this end, after the Spring Festival in 2014, Wu Xu specifically looking for financial advisers to prepare A round of financing matters. This year the capital market tends to pick up a lot of business financing a good year, Wu Xu also catch up with this wave, 34 months to interview a lot of investment agencies, many of them well-known VC, in his own words Said that thanks to the strength of technology and products, there was no cold market for the project on financing.

Not long ago, Wu Xu and a well-known venture capital firm A round of valuation, seeing the investment agreement is coming to an end, Wu Xu received an angel investment agency phone, clearly tell the essentials vote A round, which makes Wu Xu suddenly stupid This is what he did not think of. "That VC has also made it clear that the main vote, and do not want to do with the cast." This makes Wu Xu is embarrassed.

According to the "First Financial Daily" reporter understands that when the enterprise enters the next round of investment, the previous round of major investors have investment priorities, but from the existing majority of cases, the usual practice is the previous round of The main investment will take a round of ways to take with the project continued to be optimistic.

Although the aforesaid practice of angel investment institutions is rare in the industry, as the forerunner of angel investors and angel investment institutions in the equity investment industry chain, the activity of the past two years is obvious to all. Especially in the context of the overall downturn in the VC / PE market last year, the rise of angel investment contrarian, regardless of the number of investment cases or the scale of investment all the way bullish. In the first half of this year, domestic angel investment continued the active trend of last year.

According to statistics from the Research Institute of Investment, a total of 199 cases of angel investment were disclosed in the first half of this year with a total investment of 1.122 billion yuan. The investment scale surpassed last year's level.

VC front confrontation

"In the past two years, many Chinese angel investors or angel investment agencies are too active and obviously feel their competition with our VC is getting fiercer and fiercer," one VC foreign partner who declined to be named told reporters.

According to him, angel investment and VC in the past is the relay of the relationship between the companies entering the A round or early stage B, many angel investors will be a premium to withdraw or withdraw part of the VC to take the plate. However, the partners bluntly, the current situation is that the angel investors may have been looking for the project may have been held, even if the company is in which stage of investment will vote, the layout of the whole industry chain investment pattern.

Angels start to grab VC investment job, which is obviously VC who do not want to see the situation. In response, the above-mentioned partners bluntly: "In the past many VCs made investment decisions as an indicator of whether the project had angel investment, but now we do it one step ahead of them. "

According to him, his agency has set up a small micro-fund, at the same time start incubator for entrepreneurial projects, set up a special team, the purpose is to hope to gather more start-up resources, in order to combat angel investment . "We will now invest 3 million yuan or less of the project, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the project. As long as their hatch well, can continue to vote in the A round."

In an interview with angel investors and angel investment agencies, reporters also found that their current investments have also become quite flexible. "The investment is still an investment business in the final analysis, the key depends on whether the sale is profitable." Angel angel investment agency told reporters bluntly, "Angels often bet on an innovation, there is a huge explosion Business model of growth, and a reckless entrepreneurial team, but now with the shorter rounds of the Angel and A rounds, in many cases, the angels and VCs will get closer and closer. "

He said: "Now Angel investment is not bad money, business investment in the angel stage subjective things will be more points, but if the angel is optimistic about this project, it is unlikely to quit, let go to the next round of VC, or will Want to account for the bulk of the angel investment is characterized by diversification, if I vote for the decentralization of 10 projects, of which gamble into the overall return will have it.

Although there is nothing wrong with the competition among capital, it is easy to affect the development of enterprises to a certain extent.

Although Wu Xu angel investor and the VC side of the coordination between the two, but the angel investors are determined to be in the A round collar vote, a huff, VC side decided to give up investment. "The more well-known VC harder to negotiate, they are demanding and insistent on some of the terms and conditions." Wu Xu said that the reason VC eventually decided to give up only a small amount of investment with the investment side, accounting for shares The ratio will change, with the investment side does not have the right to manage the business being invested is the main reason.

Generally speaking, after the investment, the management of the invested enterprises is mainly conducted by the main investment side, whereas the funds that follow the investment are often only used as financial investors and not involved in the management of the enterprises being invested. "This VC is not willing to enter with the vote, they prefer to lead the vote so that they can control the project." Wu Xu reluctantly said, "We all want to be big brother, do not want to be a brother, and we are very passive." "

Currently, due to the fact that the angel investor's lead A round of funding did not reach the expected level, Wu Xu said he had no choice but to look for VC firms willing to follow up, originally expected to complete the financing by the middle of the year. The plan to market the product in September was delayed . getty map