The informal investment context: specific issues concerned with business angels

Abstract

Informal investors play a key role to meet the financing needs of business projects in early stages. However, this is a group in which there are different kinds and ways of dealing with investment. One of these profiles is associated with the figure known as business angel, whose main distinguishing feature is its ability to add smart capital in the form of knowledge, experience and contacts. The aim of this paper is to determine to what extent the specific profile of business angels differ from the rest of informal investors. With a sample of over 800 informal investors in Spain, the empirical results of this study show that the higher income, skills and entrepreneurial training and the less family ties to the entrepreneur, the greater the probability of belonging to business angel investment group.

Keywords

• informal investing
• business angels
• entrepreneurship