Who I invest in and why I invest in them

All of the personal angel investments I’ve made so far have come about organically based on the people I know and the relationships I’ve built over my career. I wouldn’t say that this was an explicit strategy or thesis that I formed before I started investing, but when I look back on the investments I’ve made, a few themes have emerged. On reflection, it’s clear these themes are important to me and are the unofficial basis for my investment decisioning around non-public securities. The goal of this blog entry is to formally articulate these themes.

Opportunistic investing isn’t necessarily the best strategy for a large scale investment strategy, but is tenable for my low total dollar allocation and the opportunity cost related to time spent with portfolio companies pre-investment and post-investment. A large family office or institutional fund will be making 10+ investments a year, generally, and thus they need to be far more methodical and thorough about filling the top of their funnel at much greater volumes than I do as an individual investor in order to meet their investment volumes given funnel fall-out from initial meet-and-greets all the way to diligence.

Additionally, while performing angel investments I was always working full-time as an operator. Given that, unlike the behavior and tactics of larger investors, I’d use a heavily people-first strategy informed by the charactertics detailed in the next section below. With my experience as an operator, I saw in my C-level leadership that these traits served as a great heuristic for future success for the business.

I look for the following characteristics and qualities in solo founders or founding teams:

I’m looking for the mental equivalent of a utility player in baseball or a basketball player that can comfortably play any front-court or back-court position. With constantly shifting dynamics of the game at play, at least these characteristics are a base constant weighing things in favor of success as they’re the only thing that won’t change (markets change, direction of the venture change, but people rarely change).

You’ll probably notice that these are all characteristics associated with the founder and virtually agnostic of any particular vertical that they’re operating within. My vertical strategy is pretty simple: if I don’t understand it remotely I don’t invest in it. Or alternatively, if I don’t have the excitement around the space required to become highly familiar I won’t invest in it.

You won’t see me investing in blockchain instruments used to validate provenance of claims. For example, I’ve passed on just such a founder that went on to raise over $2MM in her first unpriced round, including investors from A16Z and more — and I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t invest in medtech or frontier tech that requires deep understanding in the sciences typically gained through an advanced degree . One such medtech opportunity just hit my inbox, and I passed pretty quickly. I did, however, offer up my network as a gesture of good will as venture capital is a long game. Fundamentally, angel investing is risky enough, so there is no need to add gross ignorance or absolutely no personal interest as yet other variables.

Related posts:

I got a chance to cooperate with a Slovakia fashion designer to explore the market to Asia. We invited all the potential client to our fashion week. Everyone dress so elegant, even some man looks…

It seems as if people are constantly looking down on their smartphones rather than being more attentive to what is around them these days. There is no doubt that we live in a world where social media…

7 ways to maintain your meditation practice in the new year.