CASE STUDY | VENTURE CAPITAL

Western Norway needs more angel investors

Angel investors, bankers, family offices and founders, after two days of Scale Up Angel Program

Article from Connect Vest, Innovation week.

“Investing as an angel investor can be simple. Supporting companies, contributing as an active advisor, building boards and scaling them can be far”, far harder, says Christian Rangen, who has just completed the Capital Simulator with Connect Vest.

Connect Capital Simulator is an advanced program in early-stage investing, based on the renowned Scale Up! Simulator from Strategy Tools and Christian Rangen.

The full program runs over four weeks, with an intense two-day Masterclass as the highlight. Over two intensive days, participants get a hands-on feel for what it’s like to build, finance and scale companies from start-up to exit – together with other investors, founders and advisors.

Scaling with angel investors – eight years in just two days.

“Norway needs more angel investors. Connect Vest is making a major effort here to strengthen the capital and investment environment in Norway. This initiative lays the foundation for far more growth companies and active angel investors in Western Norway,” says Christian Rangen.

As burn rate went from 10.000 to 50.000 and quickly 100.000 every founder realized that their plan for ‘slow burn, no growth’ had to make way for a ‘raise capital, ramp up’ strategy. Right out of the gate, the Investor Relations Manager (IRM) took a key role, securing, segmenting and structuring term sheets. (Did you know, there is actually such a thing as ‘too many term sheets’?).

Team three, Dubai-based CyberShield, raced to level five AI, securing the coveted 10M grant from KSA. Not a bad revenue to book in the early-stages. Day 1 ended with Gamma-infused pitch preparations ready for Day 2’s investor pitch session.

Recognized work

Christian Rangen is the founder of Strategy Tools, a global strategy firm with customers in more than 50 countries. He was a key contributor to the development of the Connect Capital Simulator.

Rangen is a strategy advisor who works with senior executives, companies, innovation agencies, venture funds, national funds-of-funds and governments on their most important strategic and transformation challenges.

Through his work, he has helped shape national innovation policy in North America, accelerated new venture funds globally, built angel networks in the Middle East, and helped large companies with restructuring. His research on Innovation Superclusters and national venture capital ecosystems has been called groundbreaking, and he runs VC Masterclasses and GP Accelerator programs for countries seeking to develop their venture capital ecosystems.

High-pace program delivery

Teams sprint through the founder’s journey

“Those of us who run investor networks have experience showing that becoming confident as an investor requires both networking and skills development. In the Capital Simulator you get both. It’s an intravenous competence infusion over the course of 48 hours,” says Gøril Selvik, head of Connect Vest.

Connect Vest, together with partners, launched “10 measures to close the capital gap” earlier this year. Several parties have backed the measures, including Investinor, NAST and NVCA.

“We need to pick up the pace, so we achieve a faster rate of transformation and also develop entirely new industries. Building investing skills is absolutely crucial to our success. Here, the Capital Simulator is an important step. To gain momentum, we need more people to understand why there is a capital gap in the allocation phase for start-up companies,” Selvik states.

And she gets confirmation from Christian Rangen:

“It’s easy to get started as an angel investor, but it can be difficult to become a truly good angel. This initiative from Connect Vest is elevating and building far more good, solid angel investors in Western Norway.”

New insight leads to new investments

Backstage, audits on cap tables

After two days of intensive work, participants gave very positive feedback:

“The best feedback we get is when participants say that new insight changes how they want to work with companies and investments going forward. And when people find each other and want to start investing together,” concludes Torunn Stangevåg, project manager for the Connect Capital Simulator at Connect Vest.

Fast facts:

Norway is looking to develop 100’s of new, active angel investors. The Connect Vest Capital Simulator program is a 4-6 week program aimed at new and experienced angel investors, including family offices, CVCs, banks, VCs and anyone involved in the early-stage investment landscape. The program has three webinars, curated pre-reads and a two-day, in-person Masterclass.

The program is built around the Scale Up Nordics! simulation, allowing participants to truly experience early-stage investments and angel investing, by working through a 8-year growth journey together – in just 2-3 days.

Globally, more than 7.500 people across 50+ countries have been through a Scale Up! Program.

Learn more:

Connect Vest Angel Program: Capital Simulator

Case study: Capital Simulator Forde

Source: original article.