Last Thursday, we presented at Open Angel Forum (OAF) NYC, the third installment of OAF started by Jason Calacanis. We wanted to share our experience and overwhelming support for this event. If you are unfamiliar with how OAF started, read this post by Jason.
OAF NYC was hosted by Charlie O’Donnell and Brian Alvey, organized by Tyler Crowley and held at Dogpatch Labs. (So already you know that this is gonna be a great event.) There were about 20 angels/VC’s at the event along with 6 presenting startups. The startups selected to present were picked from 100’s of applicants.
The six startups (HD Cloud, MyNines, Aristotle Circle, Kodingen, Food52 and UpNext) represented a diverse cross section of ideas and founders. Half the founders were women. Verticals ranged from food to fashion to mapping to cloud computing. Stages varied from “just launched” to “profitable and growing”. This diversity is why the NYC startup scene is so exciting. It was not six Groupon clones or another checkin service but six unique startups building great companies.
Each company presented for 5 mins (demo only) and had 5-10 mins of Q&A. This format worked great because it gave just enough time to show the product and the small size of the group made Q&A effective for everyone. Unlike previous OAFs, we were able to watch the other startups present (mostly due to the layout of the room). We were very impressed with the other 5 companies and have already started using some of their products.
Overall this was a fantastic event. The quality of the investors in attendance was extremely high quality. Each of the angels as part of their intro had to name their last 3 angel investments. The resulting list was a who’s who of startups. Very impressive. The networking that followed the event was great and we left that evening with lots of new contacts and a list of follow ups.
If you are a startup looking for angel funding, we highly recommend the Open Angel Forum. This was the first event in NYC, but there definitely will be more to come. You would be hard pressed to find a higher quality event specifically tailored for fundraising. Shooting fish is a lot easier when they are in a barrel and OAF is the barrel.
Thanks again to Jason, Charlie, Brian, Tyler, Dogpatch and all the angels for making this event possible. The dedication of those associated with this event in helping startups succeed is what makes it worthwhile.
If you want to ask us anything else about the event, application process or startups, shoot me an email at dmoon [at] upnext [dot] com
