I see "dinner" and "climate" have roughly the same frequency. This is encouraging.

Don't think we can declare victory quite yet.

First, the $1/day metric is an arbitrary ceiling for "extreme poverty". As other WB studies show, the *distribution* of poverty is more disturbing: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-fa... (NB: different PPP baseline and techniques).

Secondly, in an environment where most of the world's poor were rural farmers, $1/day was a threshold for transition away from simple subsistence. Currently, many more of the world's poor have migrated to urban environments, and the same threshold may actually represent a deeper level of poverty than suffered by those rural farmers.

See http://www.paulpolak.com/ for a view from someone who has spent 30+ years in the field, facilitating change.

Good stuff. I think a key point that you both touch on is the role of each previous generation of successes: they become repeat founders, advisors and -- most importantly -- investors. It's a numbers game, though, and takes time to build the ecosystem. In a demographically dispersed region like CO, the acceleration provided by incubation programs like TechStars is huge.

I'm in. I've been on both sides of this issue: lawsuits from trolls, and filing a defensive patent or two. In the end I've concluded the current system is broken, though I still have a concern that we give inventors enough protection from pretators.

As an economics undergrad, and later in graduate finance classes, I tended to tune out after hearing "assume a perfect world" or "assume a perfect information marketplace" (which never helped my grades). The lesson learned later is that there is something to be gleaned from understanding a variety of models, and adjusting viewpoint while considering the impact of chaotic systems.

Looking at this in some more detail (based on what is available to the unwashed masses), the classification of stage seems to be the most bogus part of the reporting. The definitions at https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTPublic/ns/nav.jsp?... not only leave room for interpretation, but also fall prey to a common survey error: if it's too hard to think about, pick a random response. Perhaps as a result, you see small investments made in all stages, and they don't map well to the amount raised. For example, BrightKite, which you know well, got a $40K infusion from DFJ in 3Q09 that was listed as "Later Stage". I'm guessing interns are populating their submissions to PWC...

Anyone from PWC want to open up the dataset for some analysis?

Thanks for doing this - I was too lazy to dig into the data when we were trading mail (and rest assured I'm well versed in mean, median, mode, skewness and kurtosis). But now you've got me interested...

This is a resonable total dollar bar for an typical angel, though I'd recommend looking for an average over three years of $25K annually so you don't exclude the more targeted/cyclic/casual investors. Ultimately you need both volume and frequency, and it is a mischaracterization to require an angel to be actively seeking investment all the time.

As for the Super Angel definition, you could probably up the requirements both in volume and frequency, but don't. A Super Angel is focused on this activity and will likely make 2-3 investments per year. While in my experience the SAs invest more than $50K at a time as well, I don't think that volume is necessarily the characteristic you're looking for - it's activity level: a gauge of seriousness, knowledge, capacity.

Recognize, too, that angels (super and mere mortal) aren't always individuals: some are representatives of family offices or small PEGs that invest mostly their own money. So not institutional VC, but a step up in seriousness, knowledge and capacity from the typical individual.

Don't want to duplicate what they are doing for sure. Will coordinate with them for sure.

Here's a virtual bottle of mouthwash - we can all improve!

I'm totally with you: I've been on the other side of the table, paying to APPLY to pitch and getting zip. So I am very sensitive about finding the right kind of companies for our investors and building good relationships with the entrepreneurs.

Interestingly enough, the companies most willing to pay presentation fees are those that are doing well in their fund-raising, as it becomes a more efficient cost of capital. If they can get in front of a qualified group of investors and hit them all at once, it is much faster than chasing down a bunch of individuals. Plus groups typically work from a single term sheet (versus n X number of individuals), so the closing process is less onerous.

But I keep coming back to the concern that we aren't getting enough promising young business out in front of investors, and I might have a solution. What would you think of a "Pitch-a-palooza" where we get 5-10 early, early stage businesses to deliver 5-7 min quick-pitches to our members at no charge? We could do this as part of a regular Forum meeting, maybe quarterly?

Let's keep the dialog going - I hate to be cast in among the vomit-inducers.