Angel-round valuations jump 23% from a year ago

Median angel investment reaches five quarter high of $680K

At Wednesday night's Venture Shift, the theme of the night was: is there a Series A crunch, with panels, investors and entrepreanuers debating the issue.

The resounding answer seemed to be: no, there is not. There is the same amount of Series A money, but much more seed capital than ever before, many of them said, meaning there are more companies being left in the cold. 

And now the new Q1 2013 Halo Report, from The Angel Resource Institute (ARI), Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and CB Insights, seems to back up that assertion, showing a growing amount of money being put into companies' earliest rounds. The data is based on 207 deals totaling $222 million dollars invested.

In the first quarter of 2013, median angel round sizes rose for the third quarter in a row, reaching a five quarter high of $680,000. That number jumps to $1.5 million when these angel groups co-invest with other types of investors.

The $680,000 median is up over 23% from a $550,000 a year before, and 4% from $650,000 the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, the average valuation from last quarter remained steady at $2.5 million, and 75% of the deals are syndicated.

"The market for angel investing is solid: pre-money valuations are stable, round sizes are trending up, and market activity is spread widely throughout the U.S.,"  Rob Wiltbank, Vice Chairman of Research, Angel Resource Institute, said in a statement. "The key trends over the last few years have been syndication and broader geographic distribution of investment; both of which suggest that attractive new ventures are finding places to start all over the country."

So where is this money going? The vast majority, nearly three quarters, is being put into three categories: Internet, mobile and healthcare.

Internet companies see the biggest piece of the pie by far, taking in 36.8% of the deals, and 31.8 million, followed by healthcare with 18.7%, or 22.6 million, and mobile with 16.6% of the deals, or $12.8 million.

Altogether, that adds up to 72.1% of the deals and 64% of the dollars.

For the first time, the report also looked at the location of angel groups, and how it compared with the location of their investments.

Not surprisingly, a huge numbers of deals, 81%, were done in the same state that of the group in question.

One thing that should be surprising is that, for the first time, the Southwest led all sections of the country with 18.1, followed by California, which had 17.4% of deals. New England had 13%, the Great Lakes had 11.6% and the Great Plains had 10.3%.

Year over year, the Great Plains and New York regions saw the largest increase in angel group deals, while New England and the Southeast saw the largest declines. 

Finally, the report also looked at the most active angel groups in both deals and dollars.

Based on total deals, the most active angel groups in Q1 were Alliance of Angels, DesertAngels, Golden Seeds, New York Angels, Sand Hill Angels and St. Louis Arch Angels.

Angel groups that invested the most per deal in the last  year were Golden Angels Investors, Golden Seeds, Houston Angel Network, JumpStart New Jersey Angel Network, Nashville Capital Network, Oregon Angel Fund and Tech Coast Angels.

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