Oregon Entrepreneurs Network is bringing Angel Oregon Technology back this year. The education series for both founders and investors kicks off April 6. Registration is open.
AOTech is an angel investment event designed for software or hardware startups. The series includes four weeks of investment readiness education for founders. Companies that are deemed ready pitch to a group of angel investors. The winner will be announced in June at a public showcase.
Up to $200,000 will be awarded through an investment vehicle raised by participating angel investors. In addition to the founder education of AOTech, the program is also a way to educate people interested in becoming angel investors. Accredited investors can get involved with a $5,000 investment and learn how to conduct due diligence and how investment works.
AOTech was last held in 2021 in partnership with the Technology Association of Oregon and the TechFestNW event. It was not held in 2022. New OEN President and Executive Director Cara Turano is hoping to bring it back as an annual event.
“The learning, the education (element) that we put into each program and the opportunity for founders to pitch multiple times, the feedback we get is that is where the entrepreneurial community is finding value,” Turano said.
For 12 years OEN held an Angel Oregon event that started with a focus on tech startups but evolved to include everything from software to life sciences to food and beverage startups. The diversity of industry made it hard for investors to evaluate one against the other for investment since different industries have different needs and return timelines.
In 2018, the original Angel Oregon program was paused. Since then, OEN has rolled out several different events with an industry focus: Oregon Angel Food, Angel Oregon Life and Bioscience, and now Angel Oregon Technology.
“The investment is nice,” said Turano, but she noted setting up a fund for each event is a challenge for the nonprofit. “The bigger impact (and we saw it with AOBio) is we had 15 teams go through and all of them indicated they learned and their pitches evolved because of the feedback they received. That component of Angel Oregon is interesting.”
The winner of AOTech in 2021 was artificial intelligence software maker Rewire Neuroscience.
For the investor education aspect of the program, OEN uses the consulting firm Loon Creek Capital to assess accreditation status in a confidential process. To be an accredited investor, someone needs a minimum of $200,000 in individual income or $300,000 jointly, for the last two years or a net worth of more than $1 million.
“(Potential investors) can be nervous to ask someone if they can invest. The way OEN builds the funds is we partner with Loon Creek and they assess someone’s accreditation status,” Turano said. “No one in the community knows if you are told not to invest. It allows us to not make assumptions on who is an investor.”
With each flavor of Angel Oregon the group also partners with industry focused organizations to help bring in more potential investors. For instance with AOBio, which is going on right now, the group partners with OHSU and Oregon Bioscience, said Turano.
In 2021, there were 89 startups that registered to participate in AOTech. The number who pitched was brought down to 40 after the education series and 10 finalists vied for the funding.
