2.1. Angel Investing: What Is It and How Does It Work?
In Brazil, the practice of angel investment is still considered recent (RAMOS; PINTO; TEIXEIRA, 2017), a factor that helps explain the limited literature and the scarcity of available data despite the significant importance of such practice for the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem (CÂNDIDO, 2018; BALOG et al., 2020).
Therefore, it is crucial to define what angel investments are and how they are structured. Starting with the individuals involved in this sector, angel investors are individuals who contribute their own capital and expertise to startups, with the aim of receiving long-term returns through equity (DALCIN, 2015).
Essentially, these investors purchase a minority stake in the invested company (RODRIGUES, 2018), commonly ranging from 5% to 15% (BASTOS, 2020), and assist the company in growing through the capital invested and the expertise provided (KUDLAWICZ; BACH; SENFF, 2015).
For example, if a given angel investor identified a startup with good growth potential and made an investment of R$100,000.00 for 10% of the company, the startup’s valuation would have been R$1,000,000.00. With the capital invested by the angel investor combined with their expertise, the company could grow to a valuation of R$5,000,000.00 in the next round of investments, and then, the original R$100,000.00 would have turned into R$500,000.00.
Although financial return is a significant factor in the investment decision, for angel investors, it is not the sole motivation, as they are more concerned with the business’s development than their personal exit (DALCIN, 2015). Thus, angel investors help make viable ventures that would not have materialized without their assistance, creating jobs that would not exist (BALOG et al., 2020).
One of the main forms of angel investment in Brazil is through convertible contracts, which give the investor the right to convert their financial contribution into shares at any time in the future without having to worry about any liabilities the company may have in the embryonic phase (GOMES, 2017).
Regarding the criteria that angel investors consider when injecting capital into an emerging organization, trust in the entrepreneur and the management team are the most relevant factors within the startup realm (AMORIM and SARFATI, 2018; HORBUCZ, 2015). From there, constant and data-driven communication between the startup’s founding team and the angel investor(s) becomes the key point (BURKE et al., 2016).
In 2019, angel investment reached R$1.067 billion in Brazil (BRASIL, 2020), a historical record at the time with growth exceeding 100% since 2011/2012 (BRASIL, 2018). In 2020, a year marked by the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic, the figures declined by about 20% (BRASIL, 2021).
Nevertheless, all these values remain below 1% of the investment seen in the United States of America (USA) (BRASIL, 2021). Entrepreneurs, however, find it challenging to secure financial support for their startups in Brazil (DALCIN, 2015).
Nonetheless, Brazil has the highest number of startups in Latin America (IZAGUIRRE; VÁSQUEZ; CUZCANO, 2017) and leads the region in venture capital investments (DUQUE, 2018), a crucial factor for angel investors looking to exit in future investment rounds. In fact, there is a positive correlation between receiving angel investment and progressing to secure venture capital funding (GIAQUINTO and BORTOLUZZO, 2020).
In this context, Florianópolis emerges as the sixth-best city for startups in Brazil and the fifteenth in Latin America (STARTUPBLINK, 2021). Despite these relatively favorable positions in the rankings, both the aforementioned ecosystems (national and local in Florianópolis) have angel investment offerings far below their potentials (SÁ, 2017; YIGITCANLAR, 2020). Without a strong presence of such offerings, local enterprises face significantly more challenges in achieving success in the market (RIBEIRO and BORGES, 2016).
On the "Magic Island" (Florianópolis), the attractiveness of the technology sector, which has a substantial impact on the local reality, was fostered by the creation of the Angel Investors Network (RIA) of the Association of Technology Companies in the State of Santa Catarina (ACATE) (GARAU, 2019). In the case of RIA, any individual can participate as an angel investor (AMORIM and TEIXEIRA, 2016). Currently, a large portion of startup founders has access to angel investment opportunities through incubators (DANI, 2017) and accelerators (DALCIN, 2015).
Another point that helps understand angel investment is the amount typically invested. To be considered angel investment, this amount can reach up to R$1 million (AMORIM and ARAÚJO, 2019). However, the average ticket size falls between R$20,000 and R$200,000 (BASTOS, 2020), making it a relatively democratic investment market that allows for the involvement of various angel investors per funding round.
After funding from friends and family, angel investment stands as the primary source of external capital for the startup’s ongoing operations (NASSAR; FERRAZ; PORTO, 2020). In Santa Catarina (SC), approximately 15.7% of startups secured angel investment, as revealed in a survey published in 2016 (WERLANG and FONSECA, 2016). The presence of an innovation culture in Florianópolis is undeniably one of the city’s key assets (MINEIRO et al., 2016).