AngelNews spreads the word

A free news service for start-ups has launched dedicated to providing updates on the activities of entrepreneurial companies after they have raised their first round of finance. www.angelnews.co.uk will enable early stage companies to communicate their achievements more broadly and more efficiently to the investor community.

The service also meets the investment community’s need to follow the development of such companies after they have raised first round funding. According to Modwenna Rees-Mogg, founder of AngelNews many investors and professional advisers of early stage companies have found it difficult to access timely information and news effectively or often complain of having missed follow-on investment opportunities.

She says: “Too many entrepreneurial companies find it extraordinarily difficult to get details of their success out to the wider investment and commercial marketplace. Both national and trade press do an excellent job profiling and reporting on many companies, but can only reveal the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of successful entrepreneurial companies making a vital contribution to the UK economy that can simply not be covered.”

And she adds that for a small resource-strapped company even updating existing shareholders can be a time-consuming experience taking precious time that could otherwise be spent on growing the customer order book.

Companies can register with the site in a few minutes and once approved can submit news up to 12 times a year. The editorial team approve the companies and news items before allowing them to be published on the website and to ensure they have raised money from third parties. This is designed to safeguard the site from becoming a fund raising vehicle for early stage companies. No information about fund raisings will appear on the site in accordance with the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 provisions on financial promotions.

Bernard Hallewell, managing director of the National Business Angel Network (NBAN) said: “We heartily welcome this initiative. Too often minority shareholders are left without an effective means of finding out what is going on, unless they regularly ring the managing director or chairman. For investors, the absence of information makes it difficult to gauge how an investment is performing – and, indeed, whether the decision to invest was the right one.”