There’s a new angel investing group in town, and this one is tied to a global organization supporting entrepreneurship. TiE Boston, the local chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs, announced today that it has launched TiE Angels to provide funding for early-stage startups in New England.
The group says it will put up to $500,000 into each deal, and can syndicate with other investors for deals worth up to $2 million. TiE Angels isn’t working off of a fund right now, but is using the group to enable individual investors in the TiE network to attract startup pitches and rally around deals. It says it’s focusing on companies in the healthcare, cleantech, Internet and digital media, mobile, software, financial technology, technology-enabled services, and communications spaces.
Globally, TiE has 12,000 members in 54 chapters. Its Boston installation runs events for entrepreneurship education, mentoring, and networking, according to its website. “We think this is a great natural extension of TiE Boston and TiE,” TiE Angels steering committee chair Abhishek Jain told me on a phone call today. There are about 35 TiE members that are interested in being part of the new angels group, he says.
The group doesn’t have a set target yet for the number of investments it plans to make per year, but is using other angel groups as rough benchmarks, says Jain. “Our ultimate goal is to make money,” he says, so that could mean doing fewer but more quality deals, if necessary. That money will get kicked back to the individual angels, and won’t go to funding TiE or its Boston chapter, he says.
