2020 has been a challenging year on many fronts and for many people!
It’s a year that will be remembered by many as we had a first-ever Circuit Breaker in Singapore and lockdowns in almost all major world economies. We went from working in the office to working from home and also having masks as part of our daily outfits.
Thanks to technology, the AngelCentral team braced through the various challenges and shifted most of our face-to-face initiatives online in just a span of days. Read on for the highlights of AngelCentral in 2020! (shoutout to our team for getting this out so swiftly!)
1) Online Learning Forums, events, and engagements
When COVID struck, almost all our plans for the year were forced to a halt and became irrelevant at least during the shutdown. We also realised very quickly how our angels and also startups were affected. We had to quickly relook at what we could do to support our ecosystem.
The first thing we did was to move our learning forum online. If memory serves me right, our AgriTech deep dive was actually meant for the first weekend of the Circuit Breaker. It was meant to be a face-to-face 3-hour workshop, but we were not able to proceed as such. So, we cancelled and refunded the participants. But our speakers wanted to do their bits and said they would like a webinar instead to share what they are doing in the situation, hopefully, to share a perspective with the other players in the field. So instead of how to invest in AgriTech, the topic became how AgriTech can help during the Covid pandemic! We organised several other founder-centric webinars over the next two months, enlisting the support of both founders and investors to share their thoughts, insights, and experiences in recessionary times. In total, we logged close to 1000 attendees for six webinars during the period. Catch up on the webinars here!
2) Learning doesn’t stop for the angels
Just like our learning forums, our masterclasses and deep dives had all gone online for the rest of 2020. In total, we conducted 9 masterclasses, namely the angel investing masterclass, due diligence & portfolio management masterclass, and legal masterclass. In fact, we mapped the experience of the physical workshops where attendees were broken into small groups to discuss cases.
Apart from the three masterclasses, we went deeper into a few industries in our curated deep-dive workshops. The topics covered this year: AgriTech, FinTech, Logistics, and MedTech. We had four panels of experts to share their extensive experiences and insights.
The dates for the masterclasses in the first half of 2021 are up! Do check them out here.
3) 12 Pitch Days organised and almost S$4M funded into startups by our members
Despite the pandemic, we managed to keep to our pitch schedule commitment to our members. We had 11 monthly pitches, 1 special syndicate pitch, where we presented in total 42 companies (selected from 600+ applications received during the year)
From meeting the founders to pre-pitch day preps and the actual pitch days, we adapted to the new norm and mapped the experience of a face-to-face setting online. Granted the sessions were more muted and interactions less “fun”, we are happy to share that our members have funded almost S$4M into the startups.
4) 7 successful syndicates
We closed the year with seven successful syndicates (RaRa Delivery, WORQ, Ion Mobility, PSLove, uHoo, Bizhare, and Flexstay Rentals) which brings us to a total number of 17 syndicated companies. A noteworthy mention is that during the COVID-19 period, we managed to put together syndicates with virtual pitches and virtual office visits!
5) Launched a COVID help page
As COVID-19 is a tough time for many, we put together a list of both internal and external resources to better support the ecosystem. Our Partners also held close to 20 1-on-1 calls with startups who needed another view on their situations.
To end off, we would like to thank all our event trainers, speakers, and members who had been so spontaneous and supportive of our work in the last year! It was a tumultuous year but it was extremely heartening to see our community coming together to openly share their worries, thoughts, suggestions, hopes, and plans. To our members, our team will continue to better our platform, curate more startups, and put together more learning topics to support your investing journey in 2021! See you soon at our next event!
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