Angel investors are a great way to obtain startup funding for your business. Typically, angel investors for startups fund early and seed-stage companies that show promise for high growth and scalability. However, the location and industry of your startup can also affect the angel investment opportunities available to you.
These are the top angel investor groups based on industry, stage, and accessibility for entrepreneurs to secure capital to launch their startups.
Top Angel Investor Groups
The decision to seek angel investment to launch your startup is the first step, the second step is finding the top angel investors to secure startup capital from. Fortunately, we have a list of the best angel investor groups for startups here.
1. Tech Coast Angels
About
One of the most popular angel investment groups for startups, Southern California-based Tech Coast Angels provides startup capital in addition to mentoring, connections, and business assistance for entrepreneurs. TCA has over 400 accredited investors across five networks, and invests in a variety of industries including medtech, SaaS, IoT, and more.
Best For
- Seed-stage and early-stage startups
- Tech startups (fintech, medtech, martech, etc.)
- Life sciences startup
April 12, 2023
Joining Experienced Business Executives Across Industries, Education and Government to Enhance Economic Development in Montgomery County
Rockville, MD — Under the leadership of Board Chair Kevin Beverly, Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation has added new Board Members to its roster, bringing a broad spectrum of experience, knowledge and ideas. The board reflects the diversity and wide range of talent of Montgomery County residents and businesses—working in coordination with the MCEDC team to fulfill its mission of helping businesses start, grow and relocate to Montgomery County, Maryland.
“I am pleased to welcome Dr. Anne Khadamian, Silvana Nani, and Devang Shah to the MCEDC Board, and appreciate their confirmation from the County Council,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. “The skills, experience, and relationships that these individuals have in education, workforce development, technology, communications, and other areas will help MCEDC continue their focus on attracting, retaining, recruiting, and convening in our strategic industries.”
“The impressive range of talent and expertise within our board provides a strong complement to the work we do at MCEDC,” said Bill Tompkins, President & CEO. “The board reflects the diversity that is a hallmark of Montgomery County—drawing in a wide range of business executives from healthcare and manufacturing to life sciences, finance and the nonprofit communities.”
By Alex Keown
April 13, 2023
Companies within the BioHealth Capital Region hub are hiring for multiple positions in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
BioBuzz rounds up some of the leading companies in the region seeking top talent, with examples of a few of the jobs for which they are currently hiring.
Kite Pharma
A business division of Gilead Sciences, Kite Pharma is developing innovative cancer immunotherapies. The company is focused on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) engineered cell therapies designed to empower the immune system’s ability to recognize and kill tumors. The company currently has 28 open positions in the BHCR. You can find their open positions here.
Sr. Director, Head of Quality Control
The senior director, head of quality control will be responsible for leading a commercial manufacturing site Quality Control organization, including analytical, microbial, technical services and sample management groups and activities for cell therapy products. The position also calls for the director to advance technology integration in the labs and methods to cultivate COGM reduction. A qualified candidate will possess an advanced scientific degree, such as an MD, PhD or PharmD, and 12+ years’ experience in Quality Control Biopharmaceuticals or a master’s degree and 12+ years’ experience in Quality Control Biopharmaceuticals.
155 Gibbs Street, 4th Floor | Rockville, MD 20850 | (301) 637-7950
A Montgomery County Innovation Network Facility
Managed by BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI)
37 Private Offices and Office Suites || 4,000 square feet of Coworking Space
Virtual space also available*
Features:
- Class A office space located in the heart of the bustling Rockville Town Center—with great access to restaurants, nightlife, community events and fitness facilities.
- Flexible one-year lease agreements with 60-day notice terms.
- Shared conference rooms with state-of-the-art audio visual systems, pre-wired offices to accommodate both telephone and broadband internet service, and wireless internet access.
- Shared kitchenette/lunch room with coffee and other hot gourmet beverages, refrigerator, and microwave.
- Access to market research databases provided through partnership with TEDCO to bona fide entrepreneurs and faculty innovators (consultants excluded). Appointments are required.
- Description of TEDCO market research databases.
BHI INTERNATIONAL SOFT-LANDING PROGRAM
BioHealth Innovation’s International Soft-Landing Program assists foreign companies entering the U.S. market with client relationships varying based upon individual company requirements. BHI can assist those seeking US non-dilutive funding through the establish of a US subsidiary in which BHI has minor control (see A below) and/or by providing any of the other support listed in B-G below. Depending upon the Scope of Work, these services may be offered on a per project/hourly basis with equity sometimes provided in consideration for BHI support. For more information, email BHI@BioHealth Innovaiton.org
A. U.S Subsidiary/Corporation Creation
- Create a U.S. corporate entity enabling company to qualify for U.S. federal non-dilutive funding.*
- Ensure international parent maintains ownership of its intellectual property.
- Provide startup management support and/or operating personnel.
- Provide interim U.S corporate office space with desk, mail, receptionist, meeting room services
- Assist in locating appropriate lab, office or other facility space as required.
B. Business Development and Market Analysis
- Assist with the development of corporate strategy, product development and business plans, pitch decks and fundraising narratives.
- Identify potential corporate partners, collaborators, and
- Assist with data/evidence development strategy (i.e. bench, in vitro, preclinical, clinical testing) supporting both market adoption and regulatory requirements.
- Help identify and make introductions to prospective strategic partners, investors, and licensees, and provide advice regarding potential agreements.
- Assist in market sizing and competitor profiling for specific products and services.
- Develop the business case and clinical strategy required for market adoption, sales and marketing.
C. Grant Funding/Non-Dilutive Funding Assistance
- Identify county, state, federal, foundation, and private economic development funding programs that align with company’s product development plans and assist with fulfilling
- Assist with the development of non-dilutive and dilutive grant proposals (i.e. refining project goals, research strategy, budget and cost proposal, program officer and KOL introductions, commercial relevance narrative).
D. Human Resource and General Administration Support
- Provide support regarding posting US positions via BHI HR function.
- Facilitate interview process thru use of BHI facilities for Skype conference calls/interviews with prospective candidates.
- Provide template for HR employee handbook for US personnel (employees, contractors/consultants).
- Provide advice regarding salary and fringe benefit negotiations.
- Review media, marketing or printed material in coordination via BHI marketing.
- Provide mailing address and access to desk space and other amenities.
- Provide Executive Administrator and receptionist support including phone, email, and mail.
E. Marketing and Promotion
- Assist with product launch/US subsidiary opening and other opportunities for visibility.
- Provide marketing and branding advice including recommendations regarding online and print publications, industry tradeshows, investment conference and other events.
- Draft press releases and edit other promotional materials for US target market
F. Pricing and Reimbursement
- Identify product pricing experts to develop relevant pricing models based on relevant research (i.e. product value, payer strategies, competition, willingness to pay).
- Identify reimbursement experts with relevant expertise to develop strategic reimbursement assessments based on pricing research, payer landscaping, medical coding research, etc.
G. Regulatory
- Identify and map potential regulatory pathways for specific products and services.
- Identify appropriate regulatory consultants to create regulatory strategy and support regulatory submissions, filings and correspondence with regulatory agencies.
- Support outreach to governing bodies.
- Support generation of regulatory filings.
H. Resource Identification
- Assist in locating appropriate lab, office or other facility space as required.
- Assist with finding CMOs and/or resources to establish U.S. manufacturing operations.
- Assist with finding CROs and/or related resources (i.e. trials hosts).
- Assist with finding legal, accounting, and other resources to support business growth.
# # #
*(BHI’s U.S. soft-landings are structured to enable the new U.S. corporate entity to meet eligibility requirements for Maryland and U.S. federal funding agency small business grant and assistance programs while enabling the international client to control its Intellectual Property. To comply with these eligibility rules, the business must have at least 51% of its ownership held by U.S. citizens and/or permanent resident aliens. (See https://www.sbir.gov/tutorials/program-basics/tutorial-2.).
COMPANY: Machfu
LOCATION: Germantown Innovation Center
FOUNDED: 2015
OVERVIEW: Machfu simplifies the complex landscape of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) by easily connecting data at the edge to IoT databases in the cloud for business analytics. Machfu grew out of a simple idea: that developing and maintaining applications in the industrial IoT world should be as easy as it is in the desktop world or the smartphone world.
GOAL: The company’s short-term goals are to create as much awareness as possible among the industries that having a standardized edge platform will bring substantial value. The less developers have to worry about the underlying plumbing in developing applications, the faster innovation can occur. The long-term goal is to reduce the enormous system integration inefficiencies that exist in bringing industrial sensors and controllers to participate in the Internet-of-Things.
PIPELINE: Machfu has secured its first major OEM customer win – S&C Electric Company based in Chicago. The win validates the need for the company’s technology and the value it will bring to the end customers which are the utility companies. Machfu is using this win as a template in our discussions with other major OEMs.
FUNDING: Machfu has secured its first institutional round. The funding will help with staff expansion and growth plans.
Q&A WITH CEO PRAKASH CHAKRAVARTHI:
The backstory of Machfu is interesting partially because part of your team has been working together for over 15 years. How did you decide to launch this company together?
The team has been together for over 15 years. We founded Eka Systems in 2001 and were one of the pioneers in mesh networking for the advanced metering market that grew big after the ARRA funding from the federal government. After Eka was sold to Cooper Power in 2010, the core team wanted to stay together and we founded a consulting company called Captiva to architect and implement IOT solutions for Fortune 500 clients. Our team has deep expertise in embedded systems as well as the business needs of many industrial segments such as Utilities, Building Controls, Oil & Gas, Water and others. During the course of consulting we realized our true DNA was in products.
Another realization that dawned on us was that we were solving the same problems over and over again. This is due to the fragmented nature of the industrial markets that were leading to tremendous market inefficiencies in system integration. Due to our depth in the technology and business needs of this space, we created Machfu with the aim of democratizing the space.
You recently lined up SBIR and Ventures funding. What can you tell us about those?
The Department of Energy awarded us the SBIR grant to create a software development kit that would enable rapid creation of new and innovative applications in the smart grid market. The office of Electricity Reliability and Energy delivery has a mission to secure the US grid and transition the legacy technologies and work flows to modern ways using web services that will bring substantial value. The transition must happen gracefully as there are trillions of dollars in deployed assets. Machfu’s platform paradigm fits nicely with this vision.
What attracted you to the Germantown Innovation Center?
Most of us live in this area and it made sense to apply to the Germantown Innovation center. At that time Ruth Semple and John Korpela who were managing the incubator companies were very supportive of our effort and understood what we were trying to accomplish. They continued to encourage us as our business model and plans evolved. We should be graduating soon and the experience as early stage entrepreneurs in this facility—now under the management of BioHealth Innovation–has been wonderful.
How do you feel about the present startup environment for technology companies in Maryland?
Maryland is an excellent place for early stage entrepreneurs. If you combine all the incubators, mentorship and promotion opportunities available from organizations such as BioHealth Innovation and the Maryland Technology Council with the early stage funding available from TEDCO and other sources, it is certainly a premier location for a technology startup in the US. What is lacking is the next level beyond the early stage. The eco-system for post early stage companies is not yet as robust as Boston or the Bay Area.
Where do you see your technology having the biggest impact?
Machfu’s technology will have the biggest impact in industries that rely on legacy protocols for communication. These include industries such as the utilities, oil & gas, water infrastructure, industrial automation etc. These industries rely on protocols such as Modbus and DNP that were developed a few decades ago prior to the Internet or modern security needs but are still being deployed today. The economics of transitioning these device to modern ways is staggering and yet the value capture is much needed.
What were the main challenges you faced when starting Machfu?
Some challenges are similar to what all entrepreneurs face – which is being under capitalized with a vision and no product. There are specific challenges when dealing with the Industrial space. The sales cycles are long and there is a large inertia in changing or even thinking beyond established ways of doing things. In addition, the early stage capital market has a lesser understanding and familiarity with the Industrials.
What makes Machfu different from other companies in the same market space?
Machfu’s team has extensive experience in engineering and management leadership in wireless and embedded software technology. The team has been working together in the IoT space for the last 15 years and has the rare combination of IoT vertical markets and embedded systems experience.
What are some of the current inefficiencies in your industry?
What we have in the market today are 50+ IoT cloud platforms. However, there is a lack of a device platform with standard APIs and segmented tool chains. Historically the IoT market (previously referred to as M2M, sensor networking etc.) has been a silo’d and fragmented market where a potpourri of hardware and software platforms were used by industrial OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to address a particular business need. Very often one business unit within a company would implement a different hardware-software platform from another business unit within the same company. This device fragmentation is referred to as “million platforms with a hundred users each”. With a projected growth in revenues from $12B to $69B over the next decade for the industrial IoT, creating a standardized device platform will fulfill a substantial market need.
What are the near-term milestones for Machfu? When should we next expect to hear about the company?
The near term milestones are to secure a few more customer wins in the next couple of quarters.
What specific advice would you offer to a first-time entrepreneur?
I wish there was a universal secret sauce. Each adventure is unique. But I would broadly say “If you believe in it, stick with it, put together a team around yourself where the whole is much larger than the sum of the parts and find experienced mentors who believe in you.”
Learn more about Machfu at http://www.machfu.com/. Learn more about BioHealth Innovation and the Germantown Innovation Center and other resources at www.BioHealthInnovation.org. Judy Costello and Nandini Arunkumar are available to answer your Innovation Center related questions.
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