Innovations in Venture Capital & Angel Funding?

I thoroughly enjoyed myself last Thursday at CSIA's DEMOgala, looking at all of the cool software companies and talking to company founders. Right after lunch I stopped by a sparsely attended session that was supposed to be a discussion on innovations in investing. It turned out to be quite different: three of the four panelists that were supposed to join David Cohen were replaced an angel and another investor. I was looking forward to hearing about the success of the methods and processes used by TechStars. 

Instead, the moderator Adeo Ressi of TheFunded.com dominated the conversation and proceeded to interject his views on what was broken in VC land. He turned to his panel of angels, told them what was broken with venture capital, and then asked them what they thought was broken. When they tried to explain how they do business, Ressi took control again and espoused his opinions. Sheesh.

Ressi is a controversial figure. TheFunded asks entrepreneurs -- the folks asking for and in some case receiving venture funding -- to rank and review VC firms and individual partners. As a result, the site takes direct aim at the reputations of every VC firm, who are not able to rebut or correct the information presented. This has led to some significant heartburn at some large firms, so much so that his company was recently named in a slander lawsuit brought by a firm in Michigan. Unfortunately I couldn’t listen to much more of this and walked out on the last 10 minutes.

Maybe next year CSIA will have a more rounded view of angel investing in Colorado.  If you don't want to wait that long, we expect a pretty exciting Town Hall at the Angel Capital Summit in November.