What is a Business Angel?
A business angel is an independent investor who provides capital to start-up start-ups who receive shares in the company. At the same time, Business Angel acts as a consultant and mentor to the new founders and supports the startups with their proven experience, network and know-how. That’s where the name Business Angel comes from, as a business angel acts as a kind of patron saint. Business angels often accompany startups from the start, while venture capitalists embark on later investment phases, such as the series phases. It remains the same that both investors receive shares of startups and invest with venture capital. However, the investment in the business angels is often lower because they invest with private assets.
Introducing 5 Business Angel, which invest in sustainable and green business models, enabling startups to successfully enter the market.
Michael Pelzl
Bremer Michael Pelzl comes from the chemical industry. As a chemical laboratory assistant, he initially works as a plant manager and is involved in corporate environmental protection. In addition to his job, he completed his studies as an industrial engineer. Later, he is the managing director of energiekonsens, an energy efficiency and climate protection agency, and with other specialists he is developing the project “green transformation” which is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment and which collects green management from best practice examples. Michael Pelzl continues to focus on sustainability and supports startups in the areas of energy, climate protection and adaptation and CSR.
Seedfeed
The Business Angel Seedfeed supports startups in founding and implementing their idea. With management expertise and a diverse network, Seedfeed acts as a consultant and is a co-entrepreneur with approximately 34 percent of the shares. The founders therefore own the majority of the shares and can therefore freely make decisions. The business angel behind the investment company Seedfeed is the managing director Arne Paul Oltmann. He invests especially in the early stages of startups.
Sustainable Business Angels
The Sustainable Business Angels initiative is a project of the former managing director of Bionade Peter Kowalsky and Jürgen Schmidt, the founder of memo, a manufacturer of ecological office supplies. The Sustainable Business Angels are launching a contest that will give the winners a one-year sustainability consultation with Kowalsky and Schmidt. The competition is also for non-sustainable startups, because the entrepreneurs see great potential for a more sustainable design and integration of ecological and social aspects, especially in the founding and early stages of a company. The two entrepreneurs, however, do not support startups in a completely unconventional way with financial means, but support their founders only as consultants on the topics of ecological, social and economic sustainability, as well as CSR, and also make their network available. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurs help the startups to find investors.
DresInvest
The business angel DresInvest sees the scarcity of resources as a major challenge of our time and therefore wants to promote sustainable growth in order to adapt living standards in developing countries to those of the rest of the world. In addition to the improved use of resources, DresInvest is also committed to a fair and equitable distribution of resources. As a result, DresInvest’s investments focus on startups that are transforming their products and services, such as education, healthcare, society and the environment. The managing directors of DresInvest are Dr. Ing. Imke Dreßler and Ralph Dreßler. To achieve the desired goal, the cooperation between the Business Angel and the companies takes place in partnership and openly. Currently, DresInvest supports the Startup SeedForward, which works on sustainable and innovative solutions for regenerative and climate-adapted agriculture, or Bioecho, a biotechnology company.
Prof. Susanne Porsche
The Business Angel actually comes from the film and television industry and is already the founder of several production companies, such as the summerset GmbH. In addition to her work in film and television, Prof. Susanne Porsche works as a business angel. The companies she invests in include Finleap, a fintech company developing banking and insurance technology companies to transform the future of the financial industry, or Terraloupe, an innovative machine learning startup. Another successful company that has supported Prof. Susanne Porsche is Auticon, an IT company that exclusively employs autistic and autistic people. Autists are particularly good at pattern and error detection, are very detailed and often think very logically. Therefore, they are excellent IT consultants. Auticon is thus the first company in Germany to employ only people in the autism spectrum. Social sustainability and inclusion are the focus of Auticon, enabling many autistic individuals to get a job. In 2018, the Business Angels Network Germany and Business Angels Europe will award Prof. Susanne Porsche the Golden Aurora, an annual award from the female Business Angel in Europe.
A guardian angel for your startup
Business angels not only serve startups as investors, but also assist the founders in all other questions and hurdles along the way to success. The relationship between investor and startup is often more personal than venture capital firms, giving the startup the support, support and advice it needs to make a successful start as a business.