Picture of Karen Rands Karen Rands got involved in the world of angel investing in 2001. She left corporate world to join one of her clients as their VP and to help them raise their last bit of go-to-market capital. She didn’t anticipate the pending market collapse, and learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process: 1) Investors invest in management as much as they do in the product or opportunity. 2) there are many, many different sources of capital that a company can use to accomplish their goal if pursued correctly, and 3) there are many more wealthy men and women who could be angel investors, but are not simply because they do not know how to invest in private companies. They may understand “silent partnership” or “owning a little piece of a company”. Following Robert Kiyosaki’s cashflow quadrant premise, investing in businesses, owning a little bit of multiple companies was the way for a dad to be a “rich dad” or a mom to be a “rich mom”. Kiyosaki touches on this concept in many of his books.
As Karen Rands got more involved in the world of angel investing, she had requests from high net-worth men and women and their money managers to recommend training so they could learn How to be an Angel Investor. There was plenty of training options for public stock market investing and real estate investing, but nothing for private equity investing. In 2003, Karen launched the Learn to Be an Angel Investor (www.howtobeanangelinvestor.com ) ebook series. Thousands opted in to receive the original drafts. Finally, the first 5 books of that series are available to purchase at www.LearnToBeAnAngelInvestor.com . Karen Rands’ involvement in the world of angel investing grew with the acquisition of the Network of Business Angels & Investors (www.nbai.net) in 2005. Now with the launch of this blog, My Virtual Angel World, she will let the whole world of angel investors share their experience, insight, and knowledge with others. To see a video of Karen explaining the relationship of her companies and her vision & mission, go to www.atlanta-ves.com/goto/karenrands .
She is on a mission to build the largest, most active angel investor network of individuals and other investor groups in the world. Angel Investors have the greatest impact on the growth of great new companies and only with more of that type of seed and early stage capital to bridge the capital divide for companies with great promise, will we continue to be strong as a nation and continue to progress in innovation to solve our world’s environmental, energy, communication, and health challenges.
With the success of NBAI as the most active angel investor group in the Southeast (www.nbai.net) and now named as one of the top 75 angel groups in the U.S. by Inc Magazine ( Link to Blog Post ) with member meetings scheduled regularly and the success of the Strategic Private Equity & Capital Conference (www.sePrivateEquity.org) now preparing for its 3rd year, Karen Rands is poised to help others launch their own venture communities to grow their local economy and create wealth for investors and entrepreneurs. To find out how you can gain her insight to launch your investor community and be part of this growing network of investors, send an email to karen @ kugarandholdings.com
Connect with Karen in Social Media:
FaceBook, http://tinyurl.com/fb-karen-rands
Linkedin, http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenrands
Twitter- http://twitter.com/karen_rands
