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Angels Den - exposed?

Following my post about the Angels Den investment club and my reservations about the business name and model.  It seems that my fears were partly valid.

I was called by Struan Johnston who has paid £99 and a is considering a further £400 to get his plan reviewed.  He posted a comment on the original blog post (see link above) and gave me a call.

Struan is concerned that this is a scam because there are no phone numbers to contact the organisation.  We spoke for a while and I have offered this blog as a forum for people concerned about the organisation to let us know about their experiences.

As luck would have it (ha ha) I met Bill Morrow at the Telegraph Business Club’s one day seminar a week earlier.  His contact details were in the literature and I reproduce them below - and they are on the original blog post so anyone needing follow-up go call / email him and Lois Cook his co-founder.

here is the text of the email I sent to Bill and Lois about my concerns and contact from Struan (he was cc and so should read it himself shortly).

Dear Lois and
Bill

I was at the Daily
Telegraph event two weeks ago where Bill was speaking / networking.  Following
that, and a posting that I made on my blog earlier (21st August)
about the Angels Den service, I got a question written on my blog about you and
I have been unable to answer it.

Follow the link to see my
post and the question from Struan

Johnston


I think this shows up some
possible communication “holes” in your messaging and it suggests that there may
be some negative observations circulating around the blogosphere.  In Bill’s
profile from the Daily Telegraph Business Club handout it says “We are making a
lot of noise in The Press, come and see why.” 

Clearly you need to enable
more direct communication in a two-way manner with prospective angels and
businesses – somehow Mr Johnston fell through the gap.  He thought he got an
automated reply complimenting him on his business proposition and saying you’d
be back to him.  But he’s heard nothing.  For a
while.

If you want to ‘set the
record straight’ I would be happy to publish your reply on the
blog.

Best
wishes, Rebecca Caroe

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Finance & Accounting, Investment, Web 2.0 for business, business growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Angels Den - exposed?”

  1. Struan Johnston Says:
    October 15th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    Since I last posted a question about Angels Den I have had contact with founder directly.

    We had a very long and interesting conversation. Bill Morrow spoke very frankly about Angels Den, and I felt much much more comfortable about dealing with them. My reservations, were understood and from my point of view allayed.

    There are maybe a few teething troubles with communications and we discussed this and as an organisation they seem to realise this shortcoming and have said that they will look a various ways of being able to communicate directly with both angels and entrepreneurs.

    I realise I maybe sounding like an advert for Angles Den but my conversation with Bill was a positive experience, and I have decided to go to the next stage with them.

    Without a doubt I did have reservations in dealing with a purely web-based business, but that is probably just my analogue-dinosaur fear of the internet. It took me months to work up the courage to buy something from Amazon….

    What I will do is keep you up to date with how things move along.

  2. Lilly Evans Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    It would be interesting to hear about your progress five months on.

    Hope that developments have been fruitful for both you and the Angels Den as well as the potential investors.

  3. Rebecca Caroe Says:
    March 15th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    Thanks Lilly, I haven’t actually heard any more from Struan about progress with his project.

    I do still receive Angels Den emails.

    Are you an investor or fund-seeker?

    Rebecca

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