I N T ROD UCT I ON Ange l I nves t i ng du r i ng COV ID-19
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First, that there would be a decline in investment ac- tivity as many angels stopped investing; second, that angels would focus on supporting their existing invest- ee companies to extend their financial runway, with a consequent decline in new investments; and third, that non-profit angel organizations would not have the re- sources to meet the additional support needs of their members and entrepreneurs seeking investment, and hence would be less effective in facilitating invest- ments. 4 These concerns reflected the wider discussion in Canada, the USA and Europe of the expected impact on COVID-19 on angel investing. 5 Fortunately, as this report shows, although angel investing declined in the early months of the pandemic it recovered later in the year, when looking at the year as a whole, angel invest- ment activity has been more resilient than many com- mentators had initially expected.
At the startof thepandemic inMarch/April 2020, angel ecosystemleadersvoiced threemainconcerns:
4 See NACO (2020) A Decade of Deals: Annual Report on Angel Investing in Canada – 2019, section 5.2 5 See NACO (2020) A Decade of Deals: Annual Report on Angel Investing in Canada – 2019, section 1.4
202 1 ANNUAL REPORT ON ANGEL I NVEST I NG I N CANADA The Chang i ng Landscape
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