As “Future Angels” we attend and actively participate in all of the angels meetings, and so far, the learning experience has been incredible. I am particularly impressed with the organization of the meetings and I am learning the appropriate questions to ask for understanding the fundamentals of a venture in just a 30-minute meeting—the Angel’s ability to quickly zero in on the critical issues is remarkable. I attribute this partially to the informal format of the meetings: a presentation spotted with Q&A is completely practical. This eases the tension for the entrepreneur and prevents the angels from falling behind throughout the presentation. When an entrepreneur struggles to explain the revenue model clearly or convince the angels as to why their marketing campaign will drive eyes to their website, an Angel immediately jumps in with questions and won’t move on until she understands.

Collaborative forums like New York Angels is a big part of what the venture community is about; as Brian Cohen has said, angel investing can be a tough sport. By coming together, the Angels can consider several potential investments at once, and analyze them with peers to spot the successful entrepreneurs and find ways to fund promising ideas. The Angels create opportunities for themselves by forming long-term relationships with entrepreneurs who have impressive backgrounds, or intriguing ideas.

At last month’s meeting, the Angels heard more than ten pitches. Here are my thoughts on a few that I would consider most promising.

NabeWise Media helps movers find the perfect neighborhood while also providing real estate agents with tools to educate their clients—think Yelp! of the real estate market. Due to the “fair housing” laws, Real Estate agents are not allowed to quote neighborhood characteristics such as safety, demographics, trendiness and noise level to their clients. Now, NabeWise gives these brokers a tool to recommend to their clients for getting that critical information. NabeWise’ success hinges on great scalability and marketing potential. CEO Ann Baldinucci hires interns to write initial reviews of various neighborhoods (i.e.: Tribeca, Williamsburg, etc.), which serve as a jumping off point for customers to research and offer their own unique feedback. Scale exists because the interns can review 100 neighborhoods in a month (as a reference point, New York City’s five boroughs have approximately 300 neighborhoods). On the marketing front, Ann is signing subscription partnership deals with large networks of real estate brokers who have provided positive feedback.

SeatGeek is the first website to both reliably scrape data from online ticket brokers and provide price predictor technology. Co-Founder Zack Groetzinger captured the Angel’s attention, proclaiming SeatGeek to be 82% accurate in it’s forecasting. The forecast uses algorithms that plow through millions of compiled ticket transactions and aggregated factors that influence ticket prices. These algorithms give SeatGeek a current competitive advantage that keeps their product superior to all other ticket aggregators and online broker sites. SeatGeek earns revenue through relationships with secondary ticket markets and has begun signing revenue sharing deals with many content sites. SeatGeek has the potential to become the next Kayak of the ticket world and for now they have gained another customer: me.

SpyderLynk creates a “snaptag”—a company’s logo with a unique (bar) code ring—that allows the consumer to interact with a company through a new marketing channel. Using mobile devices, consumers take a picture of a snaptag, which is strategically placed in a magazine or other advertisement, and then send the picture to the sponsor company. In doing so, the consumer enters into a game, wins prizes or receives coupons—the marketing and branding possibilities are endless. SpyderLynk reminds me of stickybits, in the way that both companies are creating connections between the physical and digital worlds. SpyderLynk has created a new way to build a brand, however, its success depends on (1) signing branded companies and (2) a smart marketing campaign to educate and attract customers who want to use the posted snaptags. SpyderLynk has a few name brands signed up, but for what seems like a trial, so I do not know how strong their biz dev and marketing campaigns are. This startup may be a concept that needs further development before finding investors, but for now, the angels have remained in contact.

-By InSITE fellow Jonathan Cooper

Since Spring of 2001, InSITE’s companies have raised a total of more than $215 million of disclosed funding and have enjoyed at least 6 successful exits. With 96 companies completing our program to date, that’s an average of $2.2 million raised per company – an impressive number, particularly considering the majority of start-ups do not receive funding.

The biggest raise by far was by RecycleBank, totaling $71.1 million dollars over 3 rounds. Even without RecycleBank’s funding success, each InSITE company raised $1.5M on average. That’s a tremendous amount of Angel/VC funding for startups based in the New York City area.

Filling out the top five raises are Silicon Alley Telecom (which became Eureka Broadband and is now part of Broadview Networks) ($44 million), Hycrete ($25 million), Vindigo ($22 million), and ON Networks ($16 million). Our most recent large success has been Organic Motion ($8.28 million), a 2006 and 2009 InSITE Company.

Top Angel/VC investors have been involved in these ventures, including RRE Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield, Rose Tech Ventures, NGEN Partners, First Round Capital, Accel Partners, Kodiak Ventures, PKS Capital, SJF Ventures, Robin Hood Ventures, Foundry Group, Betaworks, and New York Angels.

To date, have been at least 6 successful exits including Klipmart, which is now Doubleclick’s Rich Media Ad serving tool, Motif. Others include:

Design2Launch, acquired by Kodak
EATS Media, acquired by Delivery.com
ASPEED Software, acquired by Simtone
PreClick, acquired by Smilebox
Mycrocept, acquired by Healthpoint

More information on InSITE’s companies is available here.

These numbers do not take into account undisclosed funding amounts. We know of at least 6 companies that have received seed funding, but the sizes were not publicly disclosed, including HopStop, MediaMerx, Frogtek and Catchafire.

Although InSITE doesn’t take full credit for the success of these companies, no one can dispute that the company selection teams each semester have successfully picked the best and brightest entrepreneurs in NYC.

InSITE teams work hard each semester with these companies to refine their pitches and presentations and put them in front of our Venture Capital Advisory Program Sponsors (VCAPS). InSITE congratulates 10 years of InSITE companies on terrific success in raising funding and building successful enterprises!

– Shirley Xu, 2009-2010 Special VP for Alumni Companies