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BILL MORROW – FOUNDER OF ANGELS DEN
Bill Morrow is founder of Angels Den, Europe’s largest equity funding facilitators bringing Business Angels and entrepreneurs, with, as Bill puts it “fantastic and groovy business ideas” together.
Although anyone who meets the larger than life Bill will find this difficult to believe he started his career as an accountant working for Virgin. Over the years he moved up the corporate ladder in the City to Finance Director before deciding to dedicate his time to helping the all too often forgotten business heroes – Britain’s young entrepreneurs.
Angels Den was launched in 2007 and, partially thanks to the virtual collapse of the UK banking system, it has rocketed to success as the most accessible source of small business funding available today. Bill has created an informal and incredibly effective format for helping entrepreneurs to find the right partnerships to help them to develop their ventures into the success stories of tomorrow.
Bill himself is no stranger to the adversity that small business owners face as the idea of Angels Den was formed out of the frustration he felt at not being able to find appropriate funding for a venture that he was looking to expand.
Today Angels Den has almost 10,000 registered entrepreneurs vying for the financial attention of literally thousands of Business Angels. Never one to sit on his laurels Bill is planning the launch of an Angels magazine, a TV show to help struggling entrepreneurs, and the development of a mass public owned fund to help finance some of the best business ideas that they are approached with.
1. Tell us what your company is about?
Angels Den connects fledgling businesses which need funding with high net worth individuals who are looking for investment opportunities (known as Angel investors).
Business angels (the gentlemen and ladies with the cash to splash) could literally be anyone, from a successful corporate CEO to an everyday person with a little extra cash and an adventurous spirit.
2. How did you get started in this field?
I was trying to set up my own business and needed funding and found it a very complicated, costly experience. I spent almost £15K on Angel Investment groups and had nothing to show for it at the end so I realised there was a gap in the market.
3. Are there many companies like yours in the respective marketplace? If so what makes you stand out from your competitors?
Angels Den was launched in 2007 and, partially thanks to the virtual collapse of the UK banking system, it has rocketed to success as the most accessible source of small business funding available today.
Raising money for a business has previously been a stressful, intimidating and expensive process for many people and Angels Den set out to change that. It’s a place where people can get funding based on how good the idea is, not how much money they’re prepared to spend. It takes the minimum amount of time and causes the minimum amount of pain involved in asking for money.
It is a fast, transparent and effective service for entrepreneurs.
4. What do you enjoy about the work you do and the service your company provides?
We offer a refreshingly different type of angel investing. It is accessible to the person in the street, which it hasn’t been in the past.
We are also passionate about helping start-ups to achieve their dreams. With a good idea and a good business plan there is no reason why companies should not be able to access funding.
5. How do you go about exceeding customer delight?
One of the big hurdles that we have is that entrepreneurs, having watched a certain BBC2 TV show, think that all Angel investors have ‘scales’ and they will be ridiculed, sneered at and humiliated.
We have gone to great lengths to make Angels Den the human face of Angel investing and ensure that our entrepreneurs are fully trained in how to pitch to an Angel investor and have their hand held at every step of the way. This takes away the fear and allows them to have the best opportunity possible to secure funding.
6. What is important to you and your business?
The government supporting enterprise.
Entrepreneurism is at the root of Britain’s future growth and must be encouraged.
7. What aspirations do you have for your business?
World domination!….We are now holding SpeedFunding events (a similar concept to Speed Dating) nationwide in the UK and in Asia and looking to expand these further across the globe.
8. How has your business performed in the current economic climate?
The banking crisis had left many entrepreneurs with no access to funding as loans are almost impossible to come by. This has meant that Angel investment has become the lifeblood of start ups.
9. When starting up your business what support did you look for?
We have received investment from Angel investors, who have supplied both financial investment and knowledge.
We have also used informal business ‘mentors’ from our network who have provided essential advice and guidance as well as being a sounding board.
10. How important do you feel networking is to your business?
Very important. Word of mouth recommendations, coming increasingly through social media, constitute a big part of our new business.
11. Can you recommend any networking portals that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider?
Business Scene is a very good portal. www.business-scene.com.
12. What challenges to you face in your business?
As I mentioned, we have had to educate the entrepreneurial community to consider Angel funding as there is a lot of misinformation about exactly what it is. The Dragons Den programme has been a double-edged sword as it has raised awareness of Angel investment but it has also frightened people off.
We provide an excellent service to get entrepreneurs ‘investment-ready’ and we are sensitive to the fact that many are nervous about meeting potential investors.
13. How do you overcome these challenges?
We have adapted our service to take this into account and train entrepreneurs at ‘Pitch School’ that investors are not ‘dragons’ and entrepreneurs only ever meet investors on a one-on-one basis.
We also run free ‘drop-in’ Business Funding Clinics for entrepreneurs, at venues including the British Library, where entrepreneurs can find out about Angel investing in an informal one-to-one meeting. These are an excellent source of information and knowledge.
14. What support would you like to see made available to small business owners?
I am passionate about entrepreneurship in the UK and strongly feel that more should be done to encourage and harness the fabulous ideas coming out of the UK.
15. Tell us about some of the exciting and successful projects that your company has undertaken.
We have recently launched a new campaigning arm, Angels Lounge (www.angelslounge.co.uk) to encourage more women to become business Angels. This has achieved great media exposure and is a force to achieve more funding, particularly for female enterprises.
16. What approaches has your company adopted to win business?
Angles Den’s strong entrepreneurial team means that it is innovative and creative in its offering. Its flexibility means it regularly amends its business model, for example to expand into new sectors, such as clean technology, and also to new countries. It also becoming a trusted international advisor by creating a model to help countries grow their entrepreneurial businesses.
17. What methodology has been applied to retain customers?
Providing an excellent service and achieving results.
18. What is next for you and your business?
We are in a good place with over 3,000 plus Angel Investors onboard plus many more through syndicates and 10,000 entrepreneurs registered. We are one of largest Angel networks in the UK and Europe. Over 3,000 individual pitches, on average, take place a year between entrepreneurs and investors giving our entrepreneurs the best chance of securing funding.
We are looking to expand further into Asia plus looking at the Middle East and North America.
We are planning a fund which will allow people with small amounts to invest to support female start-ups. The fund will invest in a wide range of companies, spreading the risk and allowing anyone to become an Angel, not just those with millions of pounds in the bank.
We plan to increase the number of events held by Angels Lounge (www.angelslounge.co.uk) to encourage more women to become Angel investors. At the present time only 5% of Business Angels in the UK are women, compared with 15% in America, and this could be leading to a situation where businesses receiving funding are skewed away from female-friendly enterprises.
Finally we planning to expand our monthly ’Angels magazine’ to feature more editorial business and lifestyle copy with a long term aim of getting national distribution, in order that it’s the must-read for the Angel investor.
19. What type of project/client would you most want to work on?
Something that we don’t do is vet companies that come to us. We will of course offer advice and guidance but we do find sometimes that companies that we don’t always expect can attract funding.
20. What advice would you have for any entrepreneur or fledgling business?
Passion, passion, passion. If you have that, together with a good business plan, intellectual property and the work ethic of a pit donkey you will go far.
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