Business Angels: review in literature and a case study

Financing of a new innovative venture(startup) is the most important milestone for an establishment and further development. There are different financial institutions that are available for entrepreneurs to fill their financial needs. However, they have different attitude about investments and approach differently to the investment process. For instance, business angels with crowdfunding are financing of early stage development with small amounts of invested capital, whereas venture capitalists, banks, government funds and other financial entities invest larger amounts for later stages. Nowadays, business angels are gaining more and more attention because, they act as main source of finance to fill the early stage equity gap which is result of the shift of venture capitalists to later stages and the ability of angels to offer strategic, managerial and other forms of support to ventures apart from contributed capitals. On this thesis work the author will try shed light on characteristics and investment process of providers of capital for newborn innovative ventures(startups), focusing more on business angel financing. The work talks about business angels’ objectives, characteristics, investment process, invested amounts and invested stages of the development. The thesis also shows invested industries, value building mechanisms offered by business angels. Moreover, it discusses about business angel networks and groups and government intervention into the business angel market. Finally, the work analyzes a co-fund that is an organized way of bringing government capital and angels' capital to invest in prospective business projects.