How to fly with business angels : - A qualitative study on business angel investment criteria’s

Abstract: This study is concerned with business angels’ investments process and which aspects in their choice of target firms are considered important in that process. The problem statement of this thesis is; what aspects play a role in Business angels’ investment decision, and in what way? How do these aspects affect business angels when making investment decisions, and why? The aim subsequently is concerned with discerning what is most important for business angels when choosing their target firms and how business angels make their investment decisions. We also aim to be able to create a deeper understanding of business angels, and contribute to small entrepreneurial firms in their search for financiers. Our research can provide information on how entrepreneurs can attract business angels. The study is created with previous studies as a framework, and a wide selection of studies have been used. These have been examined and issues which in those studies have been found to be important for business angels have been reviewed and accounted for in the theory chapter. The approach we used for data collection was through qualitative interviews with the use of an interview guide. This is explained by our aspiration to understand business angels’ investment criteria rather than describe them. Due to this, the view of interpretivism along with constructionism was taken on when constructing the interviews and findings. The respondents were found through business angels networks, and the selection of business angels entailed a fair representation of the researched group. This thesis has been conducted in an academically correct manner, and the results are validated and confirmed by the respondents. The results we came to from our interviews were that the entrepreneur was most important for business angels in their evaluations, but other aspects also played a role. We analyzed our results with the use of our theory section and hence could see that some things we had come up with were unique, whilst some findings confirmed previous studies. We found that many business angels turn down investments due to their lack of time, which was a rather new emphasize for this study. Some qualities of the entrepreneur the business angels required were that they needed to be sales oriented and not overly optimistic about the future returns and prosperity of their ventures. We have shown that if entrepreneurs are overly optimistic about the value of their own firm it is likely that they will lose the deal. This was also of interest as it has not been stated as clearly in previous studies. We conclude the thesis by giving advice to entrepreneurs and business angels, what future business angels should keep in mind and also what entrepreneurs should know before they involve themselves with business angels.