Angel Holdings News

A report from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that overall venture investment fell to its lowest point in the year compared to previous quarters. This decline is attributable to the tumbling of seed capital funding that slumped 40% over the last quarter. Capital commitments however remained stable enough to buoy 2011 figures to more or less where they were in 2010. Another interesting trend saw early stage funding hit an all time high which may be indicative of a cycle of new startup funding which will begin to yield seed and venture funding through 2012. According to report publishers PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, total investments across board dipped 10-11% to settle at $6.95 billion dollars. The report further shows that the most active deal making was in cleantech and and biotechnology while software, medical devices, IT and Internet slowed down. Read More…

ENTREPRENEURS GUIDE TO STARTING A BUSINESS IN IRELAND THIS BOOK IS A USEFUL GUIDE TO ANY ENTRPRENEUR WISHING TO START UP IN IRELAND. IT COVERS TOPICS SUCH AS CAPITAL GRANTS, FUNDING, ONLINE TRADING, BUSINESS PLANNING ETC. AND CONTAINS USEFUL CONTACT DETAILS CHAPTER ONE - SETTING UP & REGISTRATION CHAPTER TWO - BUSINESS PLANNING CHAPTER THREE - LEGAL AND REGULATORY CHAPTER FOUR - EMPLOYMENT CHAPTER FIVE - CAPITAL GRANTS & FUNDING CHAPTERR SIX - TRADING ONLINE CHAPTER SEVEN - FRANCHISING USEFUL CONTACTS Read More…

MUMBAI: India plans to launch a $1 billion fund by June-July, with an initial capital of Rs 5 billion, to invest in innovations that can generate services and products to uplift the poor, a top government official told reporters on Monday. Read More…

Pitching your startup idea to investors, journalists, and random people on the street is a rite of passage for all entrepreneurs. You have to convince hundreds (if not millions) of people that you're building something worthwhile and that they should get on board. Most pitches fall flat though (the best VCs invest in perhaps 1 percent of the startups that pitch them), and it's often because of simple problems that could've been avoided. Nervous entrepreneurs stray from their story, and arrogant entrepreneurs demand unreasonable valuations and then get laughed out of the room by top-tier angels. Read More…

In its end of year review for 2011, the AIB Seed Capital Fund, an AIB / Enterprise Ireland partnership, has added a record 15 new investees to its portfolio. In all, the Fund made 32 investments totalling over €5 million in new and existing investees. This brings to over 70 the total investments made in 45 Irish companies over the last 4 years, consolidating the Fund’s position as the most active seed and earlystage fund in Ireland. The Fund’s investments are split approximately 50/50 between Dublin city and county and the rest of Ireland. Read More…

Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) aims to support 500 startups under its Startups scheme. Each startup could receive up to S$50,000 in grants which sums up to S$25 million in total possible investment. The chairman of Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE), Mr Teo Ser Luck, announced at a press conference today that ACE will be providing seed capital to a target of 500 startups. So if each startup receives about S$50,000+, then the total amount, as we estimate, would sum up to about S$28 million to $30 million. Read More…

It's less than three weeks since the Guardian was reporting the extraordinary concept of Margaret Thatcher's government talking of 'abandoning' Liverpool after the 1981 Toxteth riots. And now look at this. The city is promoting itself as a 'world capital for entrepreneurship' and is the venue for this year's Global Entrepreneurship Congress in two months' time. This may fizzle out into something pretty ordinary, but the hard times faced by Liverpool at the end of the last century obscured its much longer history as a hive of inventive and successful business. This included a dark side, in the slavery trade, and other less hideous but still regrettable excesses of capitalism when virtually unchecked. But it also built the magnificent city which now stands on the Mersey, and is looking better (bar the odd carbuncle) than it has for years. Read More…

Kernel Capital through the Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund has closed a €500k investment in Waterford-based ZolkC Limited ("ZolkC”), an innovative tourism technology specialist. ZolkC's award winning technology enables tourist and heritage sites to deliver powerful, interactive and engaging experiences to visitors of all ages in multiple languages. The ZolkC platform combines handheld guides with rich multimedia, video and audio content allowing guests to customise their experience and fully immerse themselves in tourist destinations like never before. To date, ZolkC's solution has delivered unique and memorable tours to over 600,000 visitors to various sites including the Culloden Battlefield experience in Scotland; the Saint Patrick Centre in Downpatrick, Co. Down and the Dunbrody Famine Ship Experience in New Ross, Co. Wexford. Today, the Company confirmed a contract with Waterford City Council to provide a handheld multimedia interpretation of the historic 'Viking Triangle' quarter which combines a number of the city's tourist attractions. Read More…

France’s first ever seed-capital fund for young management companies and its future star managers has been launched after it received the support of a number of major French institutional players. The Emergence fund was launched as an initiative of Finance Innovation, an organisation aimed at guiding and supporting entrepreneurial initiatives in the French market, and has the backing of the AFG, the French asset management association In the past 10 years more than 400 entrepreneurial management companies have been created in France and the fund aims to capitalise on the country’s active boutique asset management market. Read More…

End of Kansas angel investor credit Read More…