Bob DeLean is optimistic for the future of Arizona Tech Investors, one of the state’s most prominent angel investment groups.About 18 months ago, DeLean took over the helm as chairman of ATI and has focused his efforts on growing the group’s membership and inking investment deals with emerging startups.Since its inception, ATI has invested a total of $24 million in more than 93 companies, including notable Valley startups Qwick, GT Medical Technologies, Botco.ai, Virtuous, YellowBird and AlgoFace, according to the organization’s website.Last year, ATI invested in 12 companies, representing total capital of more than $1.4 million.The organization, which has 100 members, typically backs early-stage information technology, medtech and biotech companies in the U.S. and Arizona, where it’s especially looking to ramp up investments and membership in the coming months.“We seem to consistently have about 100 members, year in and year out, and I want to grow that,” DeLean said. “If we have more members, then our check sizes are larger and we become more relevant. So I think those are a couple key goals.”expandBob DeLean, chairman and executive director of Arizona Tech InvestorsArizona Tech InvestorsIn a move to spur potential dealsourcing with Arizona-based companies, ATI in May held a “Saguaro Summit” meeting in which local founders pitched their companies to the organization, which provided the startups with valuable feedback. A similar event is planned in October.“We had six local companies present, and it was sort of an olive branch to the community that we want to look at local, Arizona-based companies also,” DeLean said.Stronger due diligence While economic headwinds have caused venture capital firms and angel investors nationwide to pull back on funding over the past year, ATI has become more discerning when evaluating companies as potential investment targets.“We’re doing stronger due diligence than we’ve ever done before,” DeLean said. “We’ve got about 100 members, and we all have different domain expertise. So we want to utilize all that domain or subject matter expertise to do a better job of analyzing the companies that we’re potentially going to invest in.”Pitchbook reported a significant drop in national deal count at the pre-seed and seed stage during Q1, in contrast to trends in previous quarters in which activity was relatively robust.Investors deployed $2.6 billion in pre-seed and seed capital across 789 deals nationwide in the first quarter, compared to $4.2 billion across 1,328 deals in Q1 2023.The bar “has gone up” for companies looking to raise capital as investors are more cautious or selective when doing deals, according to Pitchbook’s Q1 Venture Monitor report, which collects data on venture capital and angel investment deal flow.”The criteria has become more stringent, and investors prefer to either double down on the best-performing portfolio …
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