THE USE AND CONTENT OF FORMAL RATING SYSTEMS IN ANGEL GROUP INVESTMENT INITIAL SCREENING STAGES

We examined the formal screening process of thirty-eight Angel Investment Groups. Within our sample, over eighty percent of the Angel Investment Groups used a committee of members to perform the initial screening of submitted business plans, while the remaining relied upon the managing partner or senior director to perform the initial screening. Of the Angel Investment Groups that use a screening committee, approximately half also employed a formal scoring system. With respect to the important dimensions used in the scoring systems, the quality/experience of the management team and the competitive advantage of the firm's product or service, including strength of intellectual property protection, were consistently the most common dimensions seen in the scoring systems examined. A content analysis of the scoring sheets was also performed in order to determine the various sub-topics and linguistic themes associated with Angel rating systems. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]