Angels must shed ‘patient’ tag

NELSON Gray, the respected special projects director at business angel trade body Linc Scottish, has called for investors to be “impatient” when it comes to getting their hands on cash.

Gray, himself a serial investor, said business angels need to extract their funding from companies at an earlier stage to free up cash for the next start-up firms, rather than waiting for venture capitalists to emerge.

In a speech at the EBAN Winter University in Brussels, Gray said: “For a long time, I have struggled with one of the most deeply-ingrained myths of angel investing: that angels are patient investors. There is an assumption that talking about exits too much demonstrates that our interests are not aligned with those of the entrepreneur.

“In the current reality, a strategy of building and realising value in the most timely and capital-efficient manner possible is the best way to drive forward the cycle of entrepreneurial wealth creation. Crucially, that is the cycle which stimulates economic growth and job creation.”

His comments echo those made last month by computing guru Chris van der Kuyl.