Rahul K. Banta, another consultant, credited event organizers for rounding up serious entrepreneurs.

"They get potentially higher-quality and more qualified people coming," Banta said, "as opposed to people who say, 'I have this idea on the back of a napkin' or 'Gee, in the shower I've always thought of whatever.' "

Entrepreneurs pitched a range of ideas, from new modes of mobile advertising to improved methods for creating engineering schematics. Some presenters had product demonstrations, others power point presentations, and some just sat at the table and explained their concept.

Rix Ryskamp of Simpligent was pitching simplified telephone networks for small businesses. He said the event was "very useful," and the fact that he was presenting to angels made it somewhat less stressful.

"I didn't feel overly stressed at any particular point," he said. "I felt like everybody was very friendly. Sometimes when you're raising money, you run into people that are kind of mean, and I felt like everybody here was very polite."

Paul Allen, founder of fundingutah.com, said this was the first time his company physically arranged a meeting between entrepreneurs and investors, but it won't be the last, because he believes it is important for entrepreneurs to meet as many investors as possible.

"The (idea) I thought was the most fundable of all, I went to another table and they thought it was the worst presentation of all," he said. "And that's why you need to meet lots and lots of people, because with some people an idea will click, and with some people it just won't click."

Allen said for future events, he likely would sit down with entrepreneurs and coach them so presentations would be more concise and address the most crucial information in the eyes of investors.

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E-mail: jtwitchell@desnews.com