Angel Investor Tips and How-to Slide Show

If you have ever considered becoming an angel investor or wondered how to attract angel investment for your business then you may find either of these two slide shows extremely interesting.

How to become an Angel Investor

How to present your business idea to an Angel Investor

Enjoy!

Check out the SA Angel Investors Blog

For those of you not aware of the SA Angel Investors Blog, it may be useful to to pay the blog a visit. They are currently featuring a number of great articles including:

Investor Partnerships the Key for Small Business

Where to find small business funding

Angel finance much more common than VC's

How to Attract Angel Investors

Let us know what you think.

Innovation Fund News

The Innovation fund is once again offering some attractive incentives and business investment for entrepreneurs, this time in the renewable energy sector. The latest call for business plans and proposals close in the latter part of September. With just more than a month to go you should have enough time to tweak your proposal and who knows you may be the next idea to get funding and support.

Details are
The Innovation Fund, through its Technology Advancement Programme (TAP), invites all South Africans (inventors, techno-entrepreneurs, engineers and researchers), who are engaged in the research and development of novel and inventive technologies, to submit their proposals.

The investment sought must be for research and development resulting in a working prototype, or similar, which is ready for commercialisation. The proposed technology must be a renewable energy technology.

SA Banks see the small business market as key

I was pleasantly surprised to see the article on the PRMinds website this morning, commenting on a recent report from on the South African banking sector analysis. Where entrepreneurs and small businesses has had to play second fiddle for years in the past due to the perceived higher risk, the recent economic slow down has really turned the tables and we now find that small firms may become the preferred market. Small business need start-up and growth funding and together with business investors, the banks play a key role here

The report states that 'We believe that the future of the South African banking sector lies in personal banking and the small and medium-sized business loans. The banks, in particular, should focus more on expansion of their operations in the domestic economy in coming years. In view of boom in Internet accessibility and mobile phone penetration, telephone and Internet banking has emerged as another key area for growth.' This will be great news for thousands of entrepreneurs and small business owners.

The report went further to say that 'The banks in the country continue lending despite economic slowdown in the world. The bank loans and advances grew at a CAGR of about 17.8% during 2002-2008. The demand for credit by the corporate sector picked up considerably in an attempt to expand production capacity and increase inventories to meet the growing household demand. Moreover, the demand for credit by the corporate sector has also been picking up in the recent years—despite the growing use by companies of non-bank sources of credit such as corporate bonds and commercial paper—driven by fixed investment and infrastructure spending.

This shows that there are still plenty of cash available for the small business sector, and a signal of intent by the banks to back the economy by boosting small business.