All of our summits in Victoria had a theme and all were focused on investors and entrepreneurs stepping up and actively engage in things that would help our tech sector. With a slowing down in angel, seed and venture investment during 2024 combined with the current threat of tariffs it was clear we needed something that would deal with all this uncertainty. It was time to take action, and the theme for the summit became: BC be Bold.

At Angel Forum we are strong believers in the notion that most successes in our space are driven by the collaboration between founding teams and the investors who back them up. These are very often not easy relationships; they go from the incredible highs to the desperately low and very often things snap which results in boardroom brawls and companies failing.

At Angel Forum we are strong believers in the notion that most successes in our space are driven by the collaboration between founding teams and the investors who back them up. These are very often not easy relationships; they go from the incredible highs to the desperately low and very often things snap which results in boardroom brawls and companies failing.

So, a lot happened in two years and Pieter Dorsman opened the summit on Friday morning by reflecting on this and outlining the challenges and opportunities ahead for both founders and investors. The theme of the summit was ‘Back to Basics’ the goal of which is to understand how angel investors actually work and how they have dealt with the high valuations and COVID-fueled tech boom that characterized the years 2020-22.

Approaching investors and getting this story across is primarily driven by a solid Executive Summary and a Slidedeck or Pitchdeck that mirrors the executive summary. These touch on a number of core points and if you present it in a verbal format it is basically a story you are telling. To get this message across is relatively simple, yet very few companies are good at it!

At Angel Forum we are strong believers in the notion that most successes in our space are driven by the collaboration between founding teams and the investors who back them up. These are very often not easy relationships; they go from the incredible highs to the desperately low and very often things snap which results in boardroom brawls and companies failing.

To provide the necessary foundation, we started off with the “Angel Investing – from first cheque to exit ” webinar on Thursday afternoon. The webinar captivated a record number of (aspiring) angel investors and entrepreneurs.

We continued using the new formula and the model stuck: the number of weekly attendees kept growing, we had no problem finding keen industry experts to talk about their business and Covid-19 impacts and a steady flow of start-ups interested in pitching connected with us.

How a large group of angels and entrepreneurs were able to really take the Victoria investment get together to a new level of knowledge sharing and relationship building.