I have one quibble with OAF's model, which is that the service providers who can afford the $1500 fee need to make that up through time billed to clients. I.e. the companies still pay the presenter fee- they just pay it over a longer period to their lawyers and accountants. No free lunch indeed.

And lest I come off as purely altruistic- I am an attorney who has worked with startup companies for my whole career. I keep expenses low so that I can keep my rates low, and consequently get priced out of events like the Open Angel Forum. That works for me.

I hope the OAF is a smashing success and spawns loads of great companies. You won’t find me there, though. I will be down the street meeting entrepreneurs over coffee.

Keep up the great work Toby. You made a terrific pitch at #OAFCO

In a nutshell, I see the very top tier ‘traditional’ VCs (Sequoia, Kleiner, Benchmark, etc.) as having healthy businesses driven by their brands. Below them you have a few thousand 2nd and 3rd tier ‘traditional’ VCs that are (or will be) facing turbulent waters (what ppl refer to when talking about the ‘VC model being broken’).

Then you have a dozen or so small, focused, and usually pretty new VC firms like First Round who have entered with a different model (smaller rounds into startups with nearer-term exit potential) that works better in today’s climate. Marching alongside them you have the ‘super angels’ like Aydin Senkut and Jeff Clavier, as well as things like OAF that are shaking up the seed and angel worlds (in some ways displacing some of the older, established angel groups). And finally, you have the incubators and alternative funding mechanisms like crowd-funding (e.g. sponsors and pre-sales) that are creating new options, especially for web and digital media co’s.

Definitely an exciting time as the landscape shifts violently and dramatically…

Anyway, long-winded way of saying, “great post!” Nathan Beckord

your industry is really in the midst of a transformation. in fact, just today i came across this debate in the comments of a post about the emergence of micro VC's.

who's going to win? i agree w/ you (or D. McClure): just like in technology, you should always put your $$$ on the disruptor.