11 ms·

Where Have All the Angels Gone?

150 points by gk1 8y ago

rightbyte 8y ago
The term "angel investor" is so cheesy. It implies altruistic motives, which are fairly rare in tech compared to say art. Maybe the shift is due to the ever expanding definition of what a start-up is. Who knows, maybe the author, but he doesn't specify any sources.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  I wonder if from mid 90s to early 20s it was like art, though, or at least more like art. Tech wasn't as big of an umbrella then. I imagine everything was a lot different, including the types of funding and the investors.
- code_duck 8y ago
  To me, it implies a magic touch. I’d agree that this is in line with some of our cultural attitudes that glorify wealth.
- walshemj 8y ago
  I suspect that it may derive from theatrical "Angels" ie those who back shows on Broadway. I do remember whilst cramming for exams in the UK listening to the only radio program still on some guy talking about how he was going to do a show based on Ts Elliots Practical cats, I though interesting that wont work :-)
fouc 8y ago
What we need are angel bootcamps to train up more angels. Anyone can be an angel investor, but knowing how to be an angel is the real trick.
- bitL 8y ago
  No self-respecting entrepreneur would talk to bootcamp angels! At a minimum, an M.S. in angel investing from a Top 10 school or preferably a PhD with at least 5 years of investing in FAANG should be the minimal angel qualifications.
  - kemiller2002 8y ago
    That can't be right. The Angel Bootcamp told me companies need Angels and there is a shortage. They said I'd even get their course at a discount as long as I gave half my profits to them for the first 2 years after I graduate.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - CalChris 8y ago
    What angels really need is a website which pre-clears the wheat and separates it from the chaff with quizzes about The Lean Startup and 0-1 because a basic literacy in the modern canon is fundamental to success.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dilyevsky 8y ago
    Our bootcamp guarantees a stake in crypto/gig economy unicorn within 3 months or get your money back!
- alain94040 8y ago
  YC actually organized such a camp several years ago. While the speakers were great, I found the bottom line a little bit disappointing: don’t try to make your own decisions, the best returns are achieved by attaching your deal flow to a more senior investor.
  - glennon 8y ago
    I went to a YC angel investing workshop in March 2018. The lectures are all on YouTube. My takeaway was to try to independently consider deals, and not worry about herd mentality. Of course, there was a lot of material, ranging from YC partners, external angels, and VCs. There was conflicting information and advice about the decisionmaking process -- which is good, I think: the process is different for everyone. Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aiJlRS2i_w&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NxhuvY98-04LtNeVJueVwx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aiJlRS2i_w&list=PLQ-uHSnFig... My evaluation template for the recent YC batch: https://alanglennon.com/2019/03/15/yc-w19-template/ https://alanglennon.com/2019/03/15/yc-w19-template/
- CalChris 8y ago
  Berkeley has Deal Camp. https://education.500.co/berkeley/ https://education.500.co/berkeley/
- edoceo 8y ago
  Cue Seattle Angle Conference, this is exactly what that group does
  - csa 8y ago
    > Seattle Angle Conference So they teach you how to be one of those lousy angels who shoot angles all the time? /s
utdiscant 8y ago
I don't have any data, but I feel the sentence "Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away or raising an institutional seed fund of their own." is one of the likely explanations. In Denmark (where I live), most angel investors seem to have syndicated together in collectives, micro-funds and other forms of investment vehicles. This reduces the number of angel rounds on paper, but I guess a lot of the angel investments are still hidden in small funds. One hypothesis is that it could be due to the increased size of the first investment rounds for new startups. I do believe it will make it harder for the very interesting and risky cases to succeed because instead of convincing one visionary individual, they have to convince a small fund with a management structure, a board, and an associate.
anovikov 8y ago
That's normal, angels being commonplace 10 years ago was just a sign of industry's immaturity. Angels deal with post-tax, personal money. They are naturally handicapped. They existed only as long as the field was considered uninteresting for institutional players.
spac 8y ago
I find that one potential source of confusion is in the definition of “seed round” . How many companies actually go from no capital raised to a $2M institutional round vs. how many raise a so-called “pre-seed” or “angel” round before the institutional round?
yeldarb 8y ago
At least for me, a big part of it has to do with the shift almost entirely to convertible notes. When I made my first angel investment ~10 years ago almost every opportunity was priced. Now almost everything is a note (either with a very high cap or no cap and a small discount). I like to know what I’m buying. And if a startup is saying they’re going to grow 1000x in 18 months but wants to cap my return over that timeframe at 20% that seems like a raw deal considering the very high risk that they won’t be able to raise at all. I applaud them for being able to get it done. But it’s been 2 years since I’ve made my last angel investment. I’ve allocated that money to stocks instead.
- empath75 8y ago
  What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing?
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing? Thumb in the air, angel investments should be no more than 2 to 3% of your liquid (sellable, with minimal price disruption, within 90 days) investable assets. (One should also be an accredited investor.) So if you're cutting a $10k cheque, you should have $500k socked away in liquid investments and $1 million in total assets. If you're cutting two $25k cheques, you should be investing out of a portfolio of ~$2 to 3 million.
    - mruts 8y ago
      You probably want 10 or 20x of that. Assuming your bets are uncorrelated and all have the same standard deviation, the standard deviation (volatility) of your portfolio is going to be: stddev_portfolio = sqrt(n)*stddev where n = # of investments Personally, I don't think I would be comfortable with the risk unless n > 25 or something around that.
  - aresant 8y ago
    Angel investing is for everybody :) But fits squarely into the "5% of investible assets" category, aka HIGH RISK. Two things about angel investing I wish I'd had a better grip on when I made my first handful: 1 - Very high risk and almost impossible to pick winners out of a pool even for established investors. Wins are extremely concentrated, and most positions lose - aka it's more akin to roulette unless you have a distinct advantage. Most "professionals" - aka established super angels like Calacanis or new entrants like Ryan Hoover via weekend.fund - target 30 - 50 investments per "fund" to mitigate this reality. 2 - Successful angel investments, even when they pay off, are usually illiquid for 5 - 9 years. Secondary markets are still being established and unless you manage to invest in Uber it's unlikely that you'll even have that opportunity.
codingdave 8y ago
As angel rounds can very well be 100% private deals, I have to question how complete this data is. I can certainly believe that in the "Startupland", as they call it, seed rounds are changing. But that isn't the whole industry. Because at the same time, there is growing pushback against VC investment for small software companies, and growing pushback against the "grow fast or fail" mentality. I know of multiple angel-backed projects just in my small town over the past couple years, that have zero news coverage. Admittedly, my small town is a bedroom community for a tech area, so we have more than your average number of software professionals here. Still, if you tell me the half dozen projects going on in my small town is outpacing the entire state of Texas... I just do not find that plausible.
epc 8y ago
I stopped angel investing when the “ask” jumped from $25k to $250k. At $250k I’d just as soon be an LP in a fund and spread the risk (and let the GPs do the work).
- davnicwil 8y ago
  (deleted content of post) Made an enquiry about parent's angel investing, attracted a bunch of downvoting, realise HN is not the forum for this. Apologies community!
  - epc 8y ago
    I'm not.
    - kcarter80 8y ago
      That betrays the authority of your original response.
      - epc 8y ago
        Because I am obligated to resume investing based on a HN comment? Wow.
        kcarter80 8y ago
        No, of course not. Because you were so quick to dismiss someone offering you exactly what you complained didn't exist.
        gpm 8y ago
        You know... I'm not an investor but if I was and someone pitched me by saying "Hey, want to give me 25k" without any other information I'd dismiss them out of hand too. Note that his profile has no clue as to what I would actually be investing in.
vladws 8y ago
Maybe part of them has invested in ICO and are now waiting for these startups to grow and return investments.
lettergram 8y ago
I think part of it is the increase in cost. I’ve spoken with quite a few VCs and Micro-Fund managers and generally been told a seed round is $250k minimum. I can’t see many angel investors investing that much. This is when I can relatively easily raise that
- xemdetia 8y ago
  I wonder if this is more accurate for what people are pursuing as businesses as well where the up front costs are just higher. Trying to start a Reddit or Facebook class site just needs a working server and some basics, where as a lot of the gig economy ideas/things-as-a-service ideas like Uber or Blue Apron need more up front capital that can't be solved by just trading sweat for marketing/growth. Not because that this is the best business idea but I can imagine a lot of proposals are trying to chase similar things. I'm not saying that those who may be considered copycats are wrong just that their upfront costs might be higher. A business starting out that is similar to an Uber or Blue Apron kills its growth if it has no money. I have also been hearing about people that are chasing WeWork as well so there is an upfront cost of facility that is almost explicitly what-not-to-do from the prior generation startup handbook: don't have an office. If an office is the product, then what? You do need a bit more money. It definitely feels like the last few years of startups are chasing very different goals that an influx of $25k (as suggested here) isn't going to help enough to solve the overhead of getting that $25k.
ThomPete 8y ago
I started a "creative venture studio" back in 2017 and we are mostly investing through a mix of sweat-equity and cash. That's actually going surprisingly well. Slowly but surely and I now have a number of equity stakes in various startups some of them quite promising.
bkohlmann 8y ago
I think it’s likely attributable to financial returns of angels. One of my business school professors was a prolific angel investor. I asked him about his returns and he laughed. He said it wasn’t about the returns - by the time he cashed out, he was so diluted (or enough failed) that the ROI was far less than an index fund. What it did give him was social capital - to say he was an angel in a famous unicorn was immensely valuable to him. Unless you’re already rich, social capital doesn’t pay the bills.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Funny question to be asked on a Y Combinator property. Angel investors were the cottage industry financial gears of the early venture landscape. As Silicon Valley matured, the factories (i.e. Y Combinator et al) got into gear. These "factories" can offer better terms--overall--in large part through their scale (e.g. alumni networks, demo day, et cetera). It's a classic maturation story. Angels still have an edge in domains with philanthropic credentials or where such scaling advantages don't present themselves, e.g. in niche technologies or geographies.
tomasien 8y ago
As a founder on the ground even in late 2015 (NYC), it was very hard to get a single angel check when we were trying to raise $500k. Ended up raising $2m from funds instead - which was the right thing but also very weird. Fellow founders with companies that would have traditionally been at more "angel" friendly stages have had a similar experience recently - either funds invest or they can't raise more than $150k. Less true in smaller markets.
not_a_moth 8y ago
I wonder if it's because 95% of angels lost their money during the peak periods so have moved on to other pursuits.
dawhizkid 8y ago
This round of IPOs will for sure create a new class of Angels...already many early employees who have sold on secondary markets are as is.
smelendez 8y ago
> Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away, or raising an institutional seed fund of their own. I guess I'm unclear what does and doesn't count as an angel investment here. This would be more useful if it included a definition.
networkimprov 8y ago
Hm, neither the article, nor anyone yet in the comments, has mentioned crowdfunding, a.k.a. Kickstarter et al... This article is old, but shows CF passing angel four+ years ago: https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding-to-surpass-vc-in-2016-65df924d8a82 https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding-to...
Animats 8y ago
The weakening of patents plays a big part in this. Early stage funding in Silicon Valley once was aimed at a working model and a patent. Angels could afford that. If you have to compete by buying market share, it takes much more money upfront.
- simplify 8y ago
  How have patents been weakened?
  - tjalfi 8y ago
    The Supreme Court Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International[0] decision made it harder to get a software or business method patent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
basicplus2 8y ago
Not enough rapidly expanding bubbles
jcfrei 8y ago
Seems to me like institutional investors have increased prices for startups beyond what most angel investors could reasonably compete with. And I would argue this is due to the ongoing low interest rate environment where investors are desperate for yield and cash is plentiful.
api 8y ago
I wonder if the cryptocurrency bubble also soaked up a lot of money that might otherwise have been playing in the angel investing market...
runT1ME 8y ago
I would imagine part of it is how much comp has risen for developers. If a couple founders are trying to raise 50-100k I would wonder why they couldn't get the cash themsevles by working for a big tech company and being frugal with their RSUs or by working the salt mines of contract development...
crimsonalucard 8y ago
Who says it's just angels? Maybe it's a symptom of the entire economy. If you told me that curve represented the silicon valley economy I'd be inclined to believe.
geoff321 8y ago
I am looking for an angel for http://staticip.io http://staticip.io

150 points by gk1 8y ago

The term "angel investor" is so cheesy. It implies altruistic motives, which are fairly rare in tech compared to say art. Maybe the shift is due to the ever expanding definition of what a start-up is. Who knows, maybe the author, but he doesn't specify any sources.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
I wonder if from mid 90s to early 20s it was like art, though, or at least more like art. Tech wasn't as big of an umbrella then. I imagine everything was a lot different, including the types of funding and the investors.
code_duck 8y ago
To me, it implies a magic touch. I’d agree that this is in line with some of our cultural attitudes that glorify wealth.
walshemj 8y ago
I suspect that it may derive from theatrical "Angels" ie those who back shows on Broadway. I do remember whilst cramming for exams in the UK listening to the only radio program still on some guy talking about how he was going to do a show based on Ts Elliots Practical cats, I though interesting that wont work :-)

fouc 8y ago

What we need are angel bootcamps to train up more angels. Anyone can be an angel investor, but knowing how to be an angel is the real trick.

bitL 8y ago
No self-respecting entrepreneur would talk to bootcamp angels! At a minimum, an M.S. in angel investing from a Top 10 school or preferably a PhD with at least 5 years of investing in FAANG should be the minimal angel qualifications.
- kemiller2002 8y ago
  That can't be right. The Angel Bootcamp told me companies need Angels and there is a shortage. They said I'd even get their course at a discount as long as I gave half my profits to them for the first 2 years after I graduate.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- CalChris 8y ago
  What angels really need is a website which pre-clears the wheat and separates it from the chaff with quizzes about The Lean Startup and 0-1 because a basic literacy in the modern canon is fundamental to success.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dilyevsky 8y ago
  Our bootcamp guarantees a stake in crypto/gig economy unicorn within 3 months or get your money back!
alain94040 8y ago
YC actually organized such a camp several years ago. While the speakers were great, I found the bottom line a little bit disappointing: don’t try to make your own decisions, the best returns are achieved by attaching your deal flow to a more senior investor.
- glennon 8y ago
  I went to a YC angel investing workshop in March 2018. The lectures are all on YouTube. My takeaway was to try to independently consider deals, and not worry about herd mentality. Of course, there was a lot of material, ranging from YC partners, external angels, and VCs. There was conflicting information and advice about the decisionmaking process -- which is good, I think: the process is different for everyone. Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aiJlRS2i_w&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NxhuvY98-04LtNeVJueVwx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aiJlRS2i_w&list=PLQ-uHSnFig... My evaluation template for the recent YC batch: https://alanglennon.com/2019/03/15/yc-w19-template/ https://alanglennon.com/2019/03/15/yc-w19-template/
CalChris 8y ago
Berkeley has Deal Camp. https://education.500.co/berkeley/ https://education.500.co/berkeley/
edoceo 8y ago
Cue Seattle Angle Conference, this is exactly what that group does
- csa 8y ago
  > Seattle Angle Conference So they teach you how to be one of those lousy angels who shoot angles all the time? /s

utdiscant 8y ago

I don't have any data, but I feel the sentence "Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away or raising an institutional seed fund of their own." is one of the likely explanations. In Denmark (where I live), most angel investors seem to have syndicated together in collectives, micro-funds and other forms of investment vehicles. This reduces the number of angel rounds on paper, but I guess a lot of the angel investments are still hidden in small funds. One hypothesis is that it could be due to the increased size of the first investment rounds for new startups. I do believe it will make it harder for the very interesting and risky cases to succeed because instead of convincing one visionary individual, they have to convince a small fund with a management structure, a board, and an associate.

anovikov 8y ago

That's normal, angels being commonplace 10 years ago was just a sign of industry's immaturity. Angels deal with post-tax, personal money. They are naturally handicapped. They existed only as long as the field was considered uninteresting for institutional players.

spac 8y ago

I find that one potential source of confusion is in the definition of “seed round” . How many companies actually go from no capital raised to a $2M institutional round vs. how many raise a so-called “pre-seed” or “angel” round before the institutional round?

yeldarb 8y ago

At least for me, a big part of it has to do with the shift almost entirely to convertible notes. When I made my first angel investment ~10 years ago almost every opportunity was priced. Now almost everything is a note (either with a very high cap or no cap and a small discount). I like to know what I’m buying. And if a startup is saying they’re going to grow 1000x in 18 months but wants to cap my return over that timeframe at 20% that seems like a raw deal considering the very high risk that they won’t be able to raise at all. I applaud them for being able to get it done. But it’s been 2 years since I’ve made my last angel investment. I’ve allocated that money to stocks instead.

empath75 8y ago
What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing?
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing? Thumb in the air, angel investments should be no more than 2 to 3% of your liquid (sellable, with minimal price disruption, within 90 days) investable assets. (One should also be an accredited investor.) So if you're cutting a $10k cheque, you should have $500k socked away in liquid investments and $1 million in total assets. If you're cutting two $25k cheques, you should be investing out of a portfolio of ~$2 to 3 million.
  - mruts 8y ago
    You probably want 10 or 20x of that. Assuming your bets are uncorrelated and all have the same standard deviation, the standard deviation (volatility) of your portfolio is going to be: stddev_portfolio = sqrt(n)*stddev where n = # of investments Personally, I don't think I would be comfortable with the risk unless n > 25 or something around that.
- aresant 8y ago
  Angel investing is for everybody :) But fits squarely into the "5% of investible assets" category, aka HIGH RISK. Two things about angel investing I wish I'd had a better grip on when I made my first handful: 1 - Very high risk and almost impossible to pick winners out of a pool even for established investors. Wins are extremely concentrated, and most positions lose - aka it's more akin to roulette unless you have a distinct advantage. Most "professionals" - aka established super angels like Calacanis or new entrants like Ryan Hoover via weekend.fund - target 30 - 50 investments per "fund" to mitigate this reality. 2 - Successful angel investments, even when they pay off, are usually illiquid for 5 - 9 years. Secondary markets are still being established and unless you manage to invest in Uber it's unlikely that you'll even have that opportunity.

codingdave 8y ago

As angel rounds can very well be 100% private deals, I have to question how complete this data is. I can certainly believe that in the "Startupland", as they call it, seed rounds are changing. But that isn't the whole industry. Because at the same time, there is growing pushback against VC investment for small software companies, and growing pushback against the "grow fast or fail" mentality. I know of multiple angel-backed projects just in my small town over the past couple years, that have zero news coverage. Admittedly, my small town is a bedroom community for a tech area, so we have more than your average number of software professionals here. Still, if you tell me the half dozen projects going on in my small town is outpacing the entire state of Texas... I just do not find that plausible.

epc 8y ago

I stopped angel investing when the “ask” jumped from $25k to $250k. At $250k I’d just as soon be an LP in a fund and spread the risk (and let the GPs do the work).

davnicwil 8y ago
(deleted content of post) Made an enquiry about parent's angel investing, attracted a bunch of downvoting, realise HN is not the forum for this. Apologies community!
- epc 8y ago
  I'm not.
  - kcarter80 8y ago
    That betrays the authority of your original response.
    - epc 8y ago
      Because I am obligated to resume investing based on a HN comment? Wow.
      - kcarter80 8y ago
        No, of course not. Because you were so quick to dismiss someone offering you exactly what you complained didn't exist.
        gpm 8y ago
        You know... I'm not an investor but if I was and someone pitched me by saying "Hey, want to give me 25k" without any other information I'd dismiss them out of hand too. Note that his profile has no clue as to what I would actually be investing in.

vladws 8y ago

Maybe part of them has invested in ICO and are now waiting for these startups to grow and return investments.

lettergram 8y ago

I think part of it is the increase in cost. I’ve spoken with quite a few VCs and Micro-Fund managers and generally been told a seed round is $250k minimum. I can’t see many angel investors investing that much. This is when I can relatively easily raise that

xemdetia 8y ago
I wonder if this is more accurate for what people are pursuing as businesses as well where the up front costs are just higher. Trying to start a Reddit or Facebook class site just needs a working server and some basics, where as a lot of the gig economy ideas/things-as-a-service ideas like Uber or Blue Apron need more up front capital that can't be solved by just trading sweat for marketing/growth. Not because that this is the best business idea but I can imagine a lot of proposals are trying to chase similar things. I'm not saying that those who may be considered copycats are wrong just that their upfront costs might be higher. A business starting out that is similar to an Uber or Blue Apron kills its growth if it has no money. I have also been hearing about people that are chasing WeWork as well so there is an upfront cost of facility that is almost explicitly what-not-to-do from the prior generation startup handbook: don't have an office. If an office is the product, then what? You do need a bit more money. It definitely feels like the last few years of startups are chasing very different goals that an influx of $25k (as suggested here) isn't going to help enough to solve the overhead of getting that $25k.

ThomPete 8y ago

I started a "creative venture studio" back in 2017 and we are mostly investing through a mix of sweat-equity and cash. That's actually going surprisingly well. Slowly but surely and I now have a number of equity stakes in various startups some of them quite promising.

bkohlmann 8y ago

I think it’s likely attributable to financial returns of angels. One of my business school professors was a prolific angel investor. I asked him about his returns and he laughed. He said it wasn’t about the returns - by the time he cashed out, he was so diluted (or enough failed) that the ROI was far less than an index fund. What it did give him was social capital - to say he was an angel in a famous unicorn was immensely valuable to him. Unless you’re already rich, social capital doesn’t pay the bills.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

Funny question to be asked on a Y Combinator property. Angel investors were the cottage industry financial gears of the early venture landscape. As Silicon Valley matured, the factories (i.e. Y Combinator et al) got into gear. These "factories" can offer better terms--overall--in large part through their scale (e.g. alumni networks, demo day, et cetera). It's a classic maturation story. Angels still have an edge in domains with philanthropic credentials or where such scaling advantages don't present themselves, e.g. in niche technologies or geographies.

tomasien 8y ago

As a founder on the ground even in late 2015 (NYC), it was very hard to get a single angel check when we were trying to raise $500k. Ended up raising $2m from funds instead - which was the right thing but also very weird. Fellow founders with companies that would have traditionally been at more "angel" friendly stages have had a similar experience recently - either funds invest or they can't raise more than $150k. Less true in smaller markets.

not_a_moth 8y ago

I wonder if it's because 95% of angels lost their money during the peak periods so have moved on to other pursuits.

dawhizkid 8y ago

This round of IPOs will for sure create a new class of Angels...already many early employees who have sold on secondary markets are as is.

smelendez 8y ago

> Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away, or raising an institutional seed fund of their own. I guess I'm unclear what does and doesn't count as an angel investment here. This would be more useful if it included a definition.

networkimprov 8y ago

Hm, neither the article, nor anyone yet in the comments, has mentioned crowdfunding, a.k.a. Kickstarter et al... This article is old, but shows CF passing angel four+ years ago: https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding-to-surpass-vc-in-2016-65df924d8a82 https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding-to...

Animats 8y ago

The weakening of patents plays a big part in this. Early stage funding in Silicon Valley once was aimed at a working model and a patent. Angels could afford that. If you have to compete by buying market share, it takes much more money upfront.

simplify 8y ago
How have patents been weakened?
- tjalfi 8y ago
  The Supreme Court Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International[0] decision made it harder to get a software or business method patent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...

basicplus2 8y ago

Not enough rapidly expanding bubbles

jcfrei 8y ago

Seems to me like institutional investors have increased prices for startups beyond what most angel investors could reasonably compete with. And I would argue this is due to the ongoing low interest rate environment where investors are desperate for yield and cash is plentiful.

api 8y ago

I wonder if the cryptocurrency bubble also soaked up a lot of money that might otherwise have been playing in the angel investing market...

runT1ME 8y ago

I would imagine part of it is how much comp has risen for developers. If a couple founders are trying to raise 50-100k I would wonder why they couldn't get the cash themsevles by working for a big tech company and being frugal with their RSUs or by working the salt mines of contract development...

crimsonalucard 8y ago

Who says it's just angels? Maybe it's a symptom of the entire economy. If you told me that curve represented the silicon valley economy I'd be inclined to believe.

geoff321 8y ago

I am looking for an angel for http://staticip.io http://staticip.io