When you're ready to run a deal, you will need to submit a 'deal note' for our review before it goes live to your syndicate investors.
When reviewing your deal note, we are mostly looking for adherence to our language rules, but will also provide helpful feedback on improving your deal note for investors to give you the best chance of success!
This guide is intended to outline what service standards you can expect from the Aussie Angels team when submitting your deal note for review, so that it can launch.
We will also cover what we do, as well as what we won't do, and include some timelines surrounding this process so that you can best prepare.
Review Phases
While we ideally like hearing about your deal as soon as you are getting excited about it, broadly there are two (2) deal note review phases:
Initial Review - this is where you share your completed deal memo DRAFT (using this google doc template) with our team for initial feedback & rules compliance
Final Review - this is where you have completed & submitted your deal via our platform for review before going live
While these aren't the only timeline phases of a deal (and we will cover more ground below), they are the core service standards we strive to achieve in order to support your deals.
Below, we will outline what to expect from each of these phases.
📝 Initial Review
Our Initial Review of your deal note begins once you have sent us your 'completed' deal note (aka 'Investment Memo' [IM]) draft.
This can be via our platform or by using our deal note template (which we recommend), and you can notify us via email, or slack, or whatever works best for you.
Our work begins once you've told us that your draft is completed (meaning each of the suggested sections that you have chosen to include have been written and comply with our language rules (sources hyperlinked, claims validated, images inserted and referenced), and ready for our review.
To start with, we prefer to work with you in Google Docs via our deal note template (this makes comments, suggestions and tracking changes much easier to manage throughout the review as we anticipate most of the editing to take place during this phase).
We strive to provide you with a complete and thorough initial set of comments within 2 business (biz) days of being notified that you are ready for us to begin.
While this is what we aim to accomplish, you can count on us completing the initial review within a minimum standard of 3 biz days.
✅ What WE WILL do during Initial Review:
Provide feedback & help you complete your deal note
Check adherence to our language rules (this is a simplified version of all the ASIC regulatory rules that apply to your deals)
Check all sources & links are working, correct and provide the right level of detail to help investors find references
Check for grammatical mistakes, spelling errors & typos
Give suggestions on how to improve your deal note based on our experience with investors (including but not limited to eg. images & media, clarity & brevity, etc.)
Provide support for your deal to help you succeed
❌ What WE DON'T do during Initial Review:
Do your source research to validate claims for you
Do your deal note & deal note writing for you
Check terms against company & deal documents to verify these are correct
Check sources and claims in the Investment Deck (which will be attached to the deal note in the AA Platform)
Confirm all deal amounts & fees have been correctly detailed
Talk to your LPs about the deal
Talk to the founders about the deal and or upcoming Founder Q&A
Our goal for Initial Review is to get your deal note in shape ready to be submitted for final checking on the platform, with a focus on the written 'Investment Memo' (IM) portion of your deal.
As you can appreciate, this process can undergo quite a bit of 'back and forth', and hence our aim is always to adhere to the above timeline standards for each 'round' of review (typically we tend to see 2-3 rounds for this review phase, but this is entirely dependent on your experience, your knowledge of the deal & access to supporting information, and how you choose to approach 'writing up' this deal).
Once you have absorbed our comments, you might be ready to submit your deal note on the platform (this will require additional deal & company information, fields, terms and documents).
Next up, we will outline our Final Review.
🏁 Final Review
Our Final Review of your deal note begins once you have submitted your deal for review on our platform.
This is only done via our platform, and you will need to complete all required fields as well as upload the required documents in order to submit your deal for review.
We strive to provide you with a complete final set of requirements on a target of within 2 biz days from submitting your deal for review.
While this is what we aim to accomplish, you can count on us hitting our minimum standard deadline of 3 biz days.
✅ What WE WILL do during Final Review:
Provide feedback & help get your deal live
Check all prior comments from the Initial Review have been addressed
Check terms against company & deal documents to verify these are correct
Confirm all deal amounts & fees have been correctly detailed
Insert disclaimers, and check and build on the risks and conflicts sections of the deal note
Tidy up any formatting & wording to improve the quality of your deal note
Check the Investor Deck attached to the deal note for compliance (claims, sourcing, consistency with the deal note)
Provide support for your deal to help you succeed
❌ What WE DON'T do during Final Review:
Touch or refer to the deal draft document (this document is assumed to have been superseded as soon as you submit the deal note into the system for final review)
Skip steps or approve your deal before it is ready
Source the required information or documents for your deal
Talk to your LPs about the deal
Talk to the founders (unless you want us to)
Our goal for Final Review is to get your deal note approved for 'distribution' (aka promotion / launch) so you can start inviting investors to invest in the deal, and at this stage we have to check everything (including but not limited to all the deal terms, docs, etc.).
In addition to our internal team check, we also have a review step to clear with our AFSL compliance team (see below for more detail).
As you can appreciate, this process can still undergo a bit of 'back and forth', and hence our aim is always to adhere to the above timeline standards for each 'round' of review (typically we tend to see the final review take 1 or 2 rounds for this review phase, but this is entirely dependent on the additional information we are reviewing beyond the the written 'Investment Memo' (IM) portion of your deal, and how well prepared your documents & terms are for the deal.
☑️ AFSL compliance team comments and how we deal with them:
In addition to our internal team check, we also have a review step (that Aussie Angels do internally) to clear with our AFSL compliance team (their goal is to review & comment on any deals going live within 2 biz days). Any feedback they provide needs to be addressed before we can approve your deal.
Note that at AFSL review stage the team we (and they) are only looking for 'red flags', e.g. unsubstantiated claims, greenwashing etc - things that ASIC looks closely at. that is addressing only those points that are preventing the deal from being approved for go live.
Sometimes we will make a judgement call and (with your permission) make wholesale changes to parts of the deal note where we feel they are too difficult to reach approval (eg. we may remove some claims entirely). You will always be informed of these decisions, and they are reversible. Please just bear in mind that justifying & reference sourcing more claims takes more time, and will slow your deal down.
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