Angel Fund

As a JD/MBA, Zack Schick was inspired to enroll in the Angel Venture Fund because of its reputation at Atkinson Graduate School of Management. “I heard it was the best MBA class for practical knowledge and experience.” Now, as a delegate for our class to the Oregon Venture Fund (OVF), Schick has the opportunity to […]

  Earlier this month, the 2019-2020 Angel Investments class began attending investment meetings to hear pitches by entrepreneurs up and down the West Coast. Students this year are attending meetings in San Diego, Pasadena, Portland, and Seattle. As we have attended investment meetings, we’ve seen a wide variety of backgrounds of entrepreneurs. Many in the […]

  In the new venture world, being struck by lightning is not always a bad thing. In fact, it’s exactly what we hope for. In my last post, I talked about what distinguishes effectual startups from causal startups, and why we believe effectual heuristics help a new venture survive. But what happens after a company […]

  Being in an MBA program and encountering the concept of “effectual entrepreneurship” for the first time can be jarring. Effectuation is everything corporate finance is not. We are used to the “causal” thinking of large and established businesses, where deep pockets require extensive planning and oversight, and obviate the need for a more flexible […]

  Many of our angel partners are surprised to learn the Willamette Angel Fund typically avoids follow-on rounds. Investors use the term ‘follow-on” to describe subsequent investments into a company you previously invested in. When the subject comes up, many investors can’t believe we don’t participate in investment rounds after our initial seed investment, in […]

When the Willamette Angel Fund was started nearly ten years ago, the idea was met with skepticism. Could a group of students successfully integrate themselves into the opaque world of angel investing? Could yearly cohorts of students possibly compete with dedicated seasoned professionals? Ten years in, our research indicates the answer is “yes.” Each semester, […]

If you follow financial news, you probably notice how much attention price-to-earnings ratios receive. For the uninitiated, price-to-earnings is a company’s share price divided by its earnings (profit) per share. As of November 10, 2018, the average P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is just under 16. This means that the share price of an […]

Although the Angel class operates as a partnership of students, setting its own agenda and deciding which opportunities to pursue, there are checkpoints built into the schedule which usually determine the pace. The most notable are our board of advisor meetings. The class has a wonderfully experienced and supportive board, made up of local entrepreneurs […]

In the Willamette Angel Fund, we see hundreds of entrepreneurs over the course of two short semesters. Often, we can’t help but sympathize with them. These are people who have spent countless sleepless nights and double-mortgaged their family homes to pursue a dream. In fact, many of the students in our fund are entrepreneurs themselves. […]

Anyone thinking the Willamette Angel Fund is a sequestered student activity should have been with us earlier this month, where class kicked off quickly by taking three of us to Southern California for a delicious dinner and rousing breakfast meeting with our regional partners. A mere two-and-a-half weeks into the semester, our first trio of […]