I recently saw an angel investors club in Austin Tx give a talk. They require a fee of $500 to give a pitch, but the attitude of the angels was much more offen

I recently saw an angel investors club in Austin Tx give a talk. They require a fee of $500 to give a pitch, but the attitude of the angels was much more offensive to me than charging startups to pitch. This is how they said it works: Every few months they hear 5-minute pitches from 40 or so companies, and narrow it down to 5 on a whim. Those 5 get to come back and give 1/2 hour pitches, and then they pick 1-2. They told us not to worry if we don't make the top 5 since they don't really think that hard about who should make the top 5 anyway. What's funny is that their investment size is typically around $100k. If they make $500 each from 40 pitches, that's $20k, or 20% of their investment. These guys were all the same kinds of guys who were bullies in high school, and this is just a way that they can keep bullying nerds. They're not really really trying to make tons of money off of these fees though. Keep in mind, in their world, everything costs a lot. It costs them $20k per year to join the country club, etc., so they just expect that people should always pay a lot of money to impress other people. Their angel investor club probably spends as much money on parties and other stupid shit as they do on actual investments. Anyway, to me, the biggest turnoff was not the actual fee, but the whole process used by this particular angel organization.