Customer Analysis

Individual angel investors, angel funds and other seed stage investment funds are key players in the VANTEC angel community. The landscape is changing with the addition of female focused investor groups, themed seed stage funds (Health, Agrifood, Climate Change), crowdfunding platforms that allows non accredited investors and young medium and high income professionals to invest in seed stage companies. The investment lens increasingly includes socially responsible investing (SRI) considerations of environmental, social and governance (ESG), United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's), or Climate Change goals (Drawdown). This is especially the case for younger "Millennial" investors, family offices and foundations which are often impact first vs business first. We are looking to update our view of the seed stage investment landscape so we can better understand how our shifting stakeholder landscape and target audience of prospective angel investors - whether they be individuals or angel funds - perceive our brand and competitors. We want to develop clarity on our competitive advantages and optimize our marketing and business strategy and increase our impact in the community This project will include: An identification and profile of current seed stage and next stage investment funds in our local community (i.e. province of British Columbia) The creation of a matrix identifying features shared across the angel investment funds and those that are different. A summary of 2-4 paragraphs describing our competitive advantages and disadvantages relative to the competition identified. This could be done in the form of a SWOT analysis. We will give you access to organizational assets to support this project such as personnel, website analytics, sales and brand collateral, and more. We can suggest names of competitors to research. Objective We hope to gain a comprehensive understanding of the angel investment funds in our space and how we can co-invest and/or collaborate through our product/service offering, and our messaging. VANTEC is often the first place where early stage companies present to investors, after accelerator demo days and entrepreneur focused events. After companies raise their first $1-2M from grants and angel seed rounds (or in some cases crowd funding), 1-2 years later they may also raise capital from aligned foreign investors and funds. There may be an opportunity for VANTEC to play a facilitating role to connect companies to aligned next stage investors.

Data Collection and Analysis

Positions available: 1-2 We’d like a student to help improve our process to collect, capture, organize, report and analyze our datasets to report on activities and outcomes and communicate meaningful insights to all of our stakeholders. With the creation of a better process and data capture technology, we hope to not only improve our ability to collect and report, we also will gain insights that can greatly enhance our strategy and ability to create valuable outcomes for all stakeholders, investors, founders and community partners. Here are some of the topics we’d like students to explore throughout this project: Improve data collection process via forms and tables Explore options to create one common platform and data set that can store and update company investment an progress data over time Work with the team to collect the latest investment data and enhance our current processes and make it more efficient Report 2020 and Q1 data in a way that demonstrates value creation for all stakeholders

Hands on marketing experience

Number of students required: 1 We support founders with business and marketing strategy advise and services. With your marketing speciality expertise we'll actually be able to help them get things done faster and better and create meaningful outcomes that help them raise their profile, engage with customers and influencers and grow their sales. We mostly work with early stage companies and as a result you'll get to see and work on various aspects of the goto market process, marketing and business development. You can be involved in the setup and creation of the foundational marketing capabilities, online launch and campaigns. Depending on the clients needs and your areas of expertise / interest this can include a combination of the following: Branding and messaging Setup and optimization of social media presence on Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, .. Setup of website, email newsletter, CRM Content creation (text, photos, videos) and publishing of digital collateral, website, social media Media and community relations