Angel Investing

 

Overview:

Angel investing allows me to put skin in the game in areas I care about, to take a backseat view of companies in their early stages, and to apply my own skills in research and understanding customers to new products and spaces in collaboration with these teams.

I do this because I want to help people I'm excited about and I want to push myself.

I typically invest in companies from pre-seed through series A and my investment criteria often comes down to three things:

  1. I would work for you if I wanted a job.

  2. I think you're going to win at what you're doing.

  3. If you succeed, you are moving humanity forward in a meaningful way.

There are a lot of other things that matter. Among them, questions I ask about the founders/company:

  • Are you solving an important problem?

  • Are you exploiting, endangering, or otherwise harming others as a result of their work? (This is an easy pass).

  • Are you creating more "stuff" in the world for the sake of having stuff? (Another pass).

  • How self aware are you?

  • How honest are you?

  • Can you hire the right people to achieve their mission?

But criteria 1-3 (bolded above) are huge for me.

How I can help:

This varies depending on the company and product, but at a minimum, it tends to be:

  • Building research and decision-making muscles at your company. Helping your team know how and when to engage with customers, gather feedback, and make use of it. I'm happy to give feedback on things like your customer feedback surveys or discussion guides and which tools to use. As you scale, I'm happy to help with hiring researchers.

  • Product Feedback and Strategy. I will use your Testflight and you will hear from me regularly. I also am interested in you not just for today but for the long term, which means I want to help you figure out what the road ahead can and should look like.

  • Introductions to other angels, investors, and potential hires. If you have my money, I have no problem making introductions or selling on your behalf. I believe in you, and in the way that sales is simply the transfer of enthusiasm, I’m happy to sell for you.

Some of the teams I’m grateful to support:

All of these can be found on Polywork with short descriptions about why I invested.