The Angel Investor Forum (AIF) was founded in 2004. AIF members invest their time, talent and money in supporting companies with solid business models and growth potential. By investing together, we provide the capital required ($100k – $1M) with a high return potential.
We prefer to invest in CT companies but we also invest in many companies outside of CT. We are also looking to increase our number of investments in women and minority-owned businesses.
We invest in early-stage companies (pre-seed; seed) across all verticals headquartered in the United States. Companies should either have a product or service in market, with paying customers or be ready to go to market with initial paying customers identified -- we rarely invest in pre-revenue companies (exceptions for high tech and life science companies working through FDA approvals). We seek companies engaged in scalable activities with a clear path to exit within a 5-7 year time frame.
Our screening committee reviews applications on the 4th Monday of each month. Our aggregate investment range is $200k - $500k including a member-based fund (representing 35% of our member base) that invests $200k per deal. We require companies to accept a minimum check size of $25k.
We receive a large number of applications each month and unfortunately, we are only able to select a limited number of companies to present to our full member base. We use a variety of criteria to rate prospective applicants, including:
Deal terms. We are extremely valuation sensitive and rarely evaluate companies with valuations that exceed $10m - $12m (exceptions for extraordinary traction and teams). We do not review companies that have not specified deal terms; we also do not invest in common stock or uncapped notes/SAFEs.
We also consider the stage of the company, the amount of funding that is being sought now (and funds that will be required in the future). We want to be confident your company has an adequate runway to succeed.