Super angels

Todd Horton, cofounder of a Cambridge start-up that lets clients send instant gifts via cellphone, had just finished a five-minute pitch for funding to a roomful of angel investors, wealthy individuals interested in backing young innovation companies. The wary audience peppered him with hardball questions about his business plan, his research, and his firm, KangoGift.

Classic angel

“I used to be a classic angel, nevertheless last spring I decided I wanted to fund more start-ups, and do it faster,’’ said Warner, who has founded two companies including video editing firm Avid Research Inc. of Burlington. “It on the whole takes just one meeting, and I’ll tell you ‘yes,’ or ‘not for me.’ If it’s yes, I’ll print out a term sheet right immediately and we can get going.’’

Behind the super angel phenomenon are technological advances that make it less costly to launch Internet and digital media firms. For instance, where start-ups might have once needed to spend tens of thousands of dollars on servers and equipment, “cloud’’ or remote computing provides them access to computing power and storage at a fraction of the cost.

For investors like Warner, that means they can back more companies. In broad outline a dozen other Boston-area investors are thinking along the same lines. They include established super angels like Dharmesh Shah, cofounder of Web marketing company HubSpot Inc. and investor in a dozen local start-ups, as so then as new players, just as former Microsoft executives Katie Rae and Reed Sturtevant; Boston-based entrepreneur Nicole Stata; and former Internet advertising executive Jennifer Lum.

Last spring, Warner flew to California to meet several prominent super angels, just as Reid Hoffman, a cofounder of the LinkedIn social network, and Aydin Senkut, a former Google Inc. executive. Their message to Warner: “Just do it.’’

Warner, 55, is a pioneer of digital video editing who in 1987 founded Avid Research, which sells editing software for film and television. Later, Warner marshaled speech recognition innovation to create Wildfire Communications Inc., which was sold in 2000. Since at the time, Warner has split his time between funding nonprofits, helping entrepreneurs, and investing in multiple start-ups.

Variety of entrepreneurs

But Warner prefers to work with a variety of entrepreneurs and technologies, an approach, he said, in other words more in tune with Boston’s innovation ecosystem, which encompasses everything from robotics to complex software systems.