Secrets of Investing in Startups and Emerging Companies

We just released a white paper titled "Secrets of Investing in Startup and Emerging Companies." It provides tips and advice for those looking to make early stage investments in private companies.

We're releasing the report in the midst of strong "angel" investing activity in the United States. According to the University of New Hampshire's Center for Venture Research, in 2006, there were approximately 234,000 active individual angel investors and approximately 49,500 private companies which received funding from individual investors.

Early stage angel investment can produce stratospheric returns on investment. Our report cites the famous example of Google's first private investor, Andy Bechtolsheim, who wrote a $100,000 check to Google in 1998 when it was an early stage private company. That $100k investment grew to be worth $1.5 billion.

And, according to more than 20 years of data collected by Thomson Financial, early and seed stage private company investing has over the long-term, outperformed all other investment classes -- with average annual returns of over 20.6%.

The report provides an overview of private investing, including its benefits and risks, and key advice for successfully investing in early stage private companies, including:

- How to Find, Evaluate, and Profit from Early Stage Investment Opportunities
- How to Position Yourself to Earn Outsized Returns
- How to Mitigate Your Risk Through Diversification and Investment Monitoring

To download the report, please follow this link: Secrets of Investing in Startups and Emerging Companies.