[mattbauer]

Why are you arguing points I didn't contest?

I have started, built and successfully exited from a couple of different companies, so I know it can be done.

Given this, how many angel investments in MN web/mobile/social/etc startups have you made?

[crawdad1313]

Hey Matt,

It seems like you are getting more worked up about this than is warranted. Nobody is trying to pick a fight with you. In fact, we all admire what you are doing with PedalBrain and we all wish you nothing but complete success. We feel like every startup in Minnesota that "makes it" puts us one step closer to our goal.

Now, to answer your question: I am not an investor right now. I hope to be able to do that someday, but I don't feel that I am financially savvy enough to hold my own in a highly technical conversation about the minutiae of financial terms within a complicated deal structure. I am a sales and marketing guy with a talent for picking winners, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I am a pure numbers guy, so VC's and angels who have been doing this for a long time would eat my lunch.

With that said, I have done viability analysis on hundreds of ideas, inventions and discoveries, on behalf of dozens of local investors, as well as having been a contract strategy consultant for the U of MN's Office for technology Commercialization; helping them figure out the commercial prospects for IP coming out of university-born-research. Also, I currently am privileged to have some of the most prominent, business-savvy investors in town support my company. So I continue to learn and hope to be able to jump into the angel investment side of things at a point when I don't feel like I am going to get chewed up in the process.

I am part of team who built the Project Skyway selection process, I see every application that comes in and I will play a role in deciding who gets funded. So, I can play a role in helping worth early-stage tech companies get seed-funding in that way as well.

Casey and I have also leveraged our personal networks, to ensure the participation of some rock-star investors, from both coasts as well as the Midwest so that, should our companies agree with you, that they would be better off somewhere else, they will at least have been exposed to investors from other parts of the country.

[mattbauer]

I'm not worked up. I'm seeking clarity for those applying to Project Skyway. They're new, naive and easily taken advantage of. I'm asking the questions I would hope they would ask.

If you haven't made enough on your exits to angel invest, then you built lifestyle companies which I understand Project Skyway doesn't want. Additionally, you're providing advice to entrepreneurs on how to create something which you haven't done yourself. That would give me pause if I was applying. Maybe your just providing your network to entrepreneurs for a fee (the equity stake Project Skyway takes). In that case, your price is much too large compared to Angel List and your value is significantly less.

[trmite]

Isn't it little presumptuous of you to claim that their applicants are "new, naive and easily taken advantage of"? If you have something to say, say it for yourself instead of claiming to talk on behalf of others.