Super Angel Boris Wertz shares his secrets
Today in the Globe and Mail Cathryn Atkinson tackled the topic of Super Angels and spent some time with Vancouver's own Boris Wertz to learn some of his secrets.
Super angels typically invest several million dollars, spread over 20 or more companies, providing each with $50,000 to $500,000. Often they invest in online startups, which typically require less capital than more traditional business ideas. And while a typical angel investor works full-time on something else, super angels tend to dedicate 100 per cent of their time to their investments.
For those who don't know Super Angel Boris Wertz, he was the COO of AbeBooks.com, an online marketplace for used, rare and out-of-print books, which was sold to Amazon in 2008.
At that point Wertz decided his future career should be tied to fostering entrepreneurship in others and he started putting the capital and experience gained from AbeBooks.com to invest in the next Big Idea. And W Media Ventures was born.
According to the Globe and Mail piece, Wertz has picked up 20 investments in the past three years investing between $50K and $250K in each for a total of $2-3 Million to date.
In an article sidebar, Wertz gives five of his "Superstar Companies" a little extra love:
- Suite101: a Vancouver-based news and information website, with 30 million visits a month;
- Indochino: the makers of Shanghai-made, bespoke suits over the internet, but based in Vancouver;
- Barcode Hero: a mobile application company based in the Silicon Valley, that helps shoppers get relevant product reviews and price comparison information by scanning a product’s barcode in the store;
- Flurry: an analytics for mobile applications company, also based outside of San Francisco; and
- Tynt: a Calgary company that tracks copy-and-paste actions on websites, of particular interest to the media. Customers already include the New York Times and Sports Illustrated.
For those of you didn't know, Wertz is also an investor in Techvibes and we are his 6th favorite investment.
Photo: kk+
