Leading New York City Universities Choose Angel Investor Tools to Professionalize Student Business Competitions

NEW YORK, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading NYC Universities are reducing the management and administration burdens of student business competitions to enable aspiring entrepreneurs to seamlessly showcase their value propositions online using the same platform used by over 30,000 angel investors around the world.

Major NYC universities, such as Columbia Business School, New York University (NYU), Pace University and Baruch College are leading the trend to professionalize student business plan competitions using Angelsoft, the global platform provider for the sourcing and management of early-stage investments.  

"Angelsoft really helped us by eliminating the need for piles of paperwork and fragmented email submissions that are inherent in traditional student business plan competitions," said Jeffrey Carr, Executive Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at NYU. "Even more important, Angelsoft enabled our students to professionally improve their ideas into well thought-out business plan submissions."

Student mentoring organizations are also benefiting from using the platform.  Junior Achievement Worldwide, the world's largest organization dedicated to educating students about workforce readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy through experiential, hands-on programs also enlisted Angelsoft to power several student business plan competitions.

Angelsoft empowers school competition administrators, mentors, judges and aspiring student entrepreneurs to manage all business plan documents and related communications on one unified platform and place them on the same system that investors actually use to fund such startups.  

The comprehensive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) fosters the internal collaboration process between judges to evaluate and select winners while giving the students the unique opportunity to professionally showcase their business plans and replicate the real fundraising process, carving out the information that is relevant to investors that is critical in determining a venture's success.

"Submissions on Angelsoft didn't look, read or feel like student assignments but professionally prepared-business plans," said Clifford Schorer, Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School. "Our adoption of Angelsoft enabled us to take our business plan competition to the next level and encouraged our students to make the most of the experience, and in many cases, continue to pursue their business interests further."

"We take great pride in providing these universities the ability to help student entrepreneurs to easily share and professionally showcase their business plans and win early funds to take their businesses to the next level," said David S. Rose, Founder and CEO of New York-based Angelsoft.  "We couldn't be more pleased that our Angelsoft platform, which serves over 30,000 individual investors worldwide and more than 100,000 entrepreneurs, lends itself to the needs of student business plan competitions."

About Angelsoft

Angelsoft provides the global platform for the sourcing and management of early-stage investments. Angelsoft enables skilled entrepreneurs to collaborate with the smartest investors by virtually supporting all aspects of their relationships from pitch to successful exit. Angelsoft is endorsed by the world's leading angel associations and now serves over 650 angel groups, representing over 30,000 individual investors.  More than 100,000 start-ups have already used the platform. Founded in 2004, Angelsoft is based in New York, NY with its development center in Vancouver, BC.

SOURCE Angelsoft