The BAE Club is a group within the larger BAE association, and brings together 19 of the leading angel investor networks in Europe and Canada. Together, they share their best practices and data, and syndicate deals on a cross border basis. Under the leadership of the BAE Club chairman, Reginald Vossen, they now have agreed to a set of Professional Standards. The aim is to show the market what angel investing is and what it's not, further underscoring the leading position angel investor networks have in the early stage investing ecosystem. The professional standards of the BAE Club range from giving definitions on what business angels are, what angel groups consist of, how are lead angels and what are the rules for admission to the BAE Club.
Reginald Vossen, BAE Club chairman and CEO of BAN Flanders, says:
"As BAE Club chair, I am very pleased to be publishing our BAE Club Professional Standards document. By doing this we are essentially - and for the first time ever - creating a harmonized, Europe-wide ‘’bottom-up’’ vision of the market. Creating this document was a long awaited effort to better define the purpose of angels, their networks, syndicates and funds in this market. I am very glad for the valuable inputs from all our 19 members and especially from our Steering Committee.
Our aim with this overview is to be constructive to the positive reputation of business angels. A reputation which was built with hard and careful work by our members during these last decades and which can only be enhanced toward the future through clear definition. Indeed, with this overview, we provide our asset class transparency and thus make it more accessible for entrepreneurs and candidate-investors. Together we build a better understanding of our activities, a co-creative process in which BAE likes to be the driving force.”
Luigi Amati, Business Angels Europe chairman, says:
“The professional standards speak to the reason why we have conceived of the BAE Club in the first place: a way for Business Angels Europe and its full members, the national business angels organisations, to keep an ear to the ground. The standards prove the alignment between angel networks and the consistent value they provide in vastly different ecosystems. At BAE we believe angel investor networks and groups are the core infrastructure for early stage investing in Europe, and the way European leading networks are adhering to this document shows why.”