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I have a similar background to OP and according to their definition, I'm not an angel investor either. But I think most "angel investors" these days operate lik

I have a similar background to OP and according to their definition, I'm not an angel investor either. But I think most "angel investors" these days operate like so: 1. I made a bunch of money at Unicorn X 2. All my friends from Unicorn X/classmates from Stanford/batchmates from YC are starting new companies 3. I write them a $10k check because I'm their friend I don't think many of these people see these checks as return-generating but rather as a way to support friends, pay it forward, etc. Money is so easy to get these days, especially at the pre-seed level, that the highest-quality companies are not even running a formal process but instead just hitting up their network.

adventured 5y ago
> Money is so easy to get these days, especially at the pre-seed level, that the highest-quality companies are not even running a formal process but instead just hitting up their network. I very much agree with that. Seed rounds used to be, on average, a lot more formal and rigid in the past. Raising $10k-$100k today is far, far more trivial than it was twenty some years ago. The distribution of angels is far greater, there are simply a lot more of them all over the US than they were in eg the 1990s, everything is a lot more casual at that scale today. It was plain difficult to talk to small investors outside of a professional VC context back then (angel tech investors outside of SV in the 1990s were a bad experience overwhelmingly), the language didn't exist, the angel investors were more often very inexperienced, and the angels didn't tend to know squat about the technology industry or the Internet generally (again, outside of SV). Some combination of increased distribution, more real wealth nationally, tech spread (today it touches nearly everything at all times), and inflation debasing what $10k-$100k means now (you have to increase that by 77% (!) to adjust the 1996 dollar to 2021).
gsaines 5y ago
Yup. This is the profile of most of the angels I know. The math suggests that you can't make a lot of money from doing it, but that doesn't need to be the goal of such investments. To your point, you're just helping friends. Also, there's a comment a little ways down about access to YC startups, and I think the comment misses your point entirely: it's quite hard to have your money be accepted by a promising startup. I'm not a bigwig/influencer in the YC scene, so gaining access to those cap tables would be pretty tough.
mattknox 5y ago
Yeah, a huge number of early twitter folks did exactly this.

adventured 5y ago

> Money is so easy to get these days, especially at the pre-seed level, that the highest-quality companies are not even running a formal process but instead just hitting up their network. I very much agree with that. Seed rounds used to be, on average, a lot more formal and rigid in the past. Raising $10k-$100k today is far, far more trivial than it was twenty some years ago. The distribution of angels is far greater, there are simply a lot more of them all over the US than they were in eg the 1990s, everything is a lot more casual at that scale today. It was plain difficult to talk to small investors outside of a professional VC context back then (angel tech investors outside of SV in the 1990s were a bad experience overwhelmingly), the language didn't exist, the angel investors were more often very inexperienced, and the angels didn't tend to know squat about the technology industry or the Internet generally (again, outside of SV). Some combination of increased distribution, more real wealth nationally, tech spread (today it touches nearly everything at all times), and inflation debasing what $10k-$100k means now (you have to increase that by 77% (!) to adjust the 1996 dollar to 2021).

gsaines 5y ago

Yup. This is the profile of most of the angels I know. The math suggests that you can't make a lot of money from doing it, but that doesn't need to be the goal of such investments. To your point, you're just helping friends. Also, there's a comment a little ways down about access to YC startups, and I think the comment misses your point entirely: it's quite hard to have your money be accepted by a promising startup. I'm not a bigwig/influencer in the YC scene, so gaining access to those cap tables would be pretty tough.

mattknox 5y ago

Yeah, a huge number of early twitter folks did exactly this.