Complete Guide to Angel Investing

Angel investing has become very popular - from successful founders to executives - many are Angel investing.

But WHY?

And HOW to be SUCCESSFUL at it?

Here is YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE TO ANGEL INVESTING!

1. Why Angel Invest ?

There are several main reasons to Angel Invest

• To make money
• To learn
• To give back to the community
• For fun
• To later become a VC

2. Angels investing to Make Money

Most Angels invest to make money - while this maybe seems obvious it is not always the case.

To make money as an Angel you need to be disciplined, consistent, networked, and ultimately lucky!

3. Investing for Fun, Learning, or Impact

Surprisingly some Angels don’t care as much about making money.

If you are very well off you may be interested in investing for Impact, to Give back to the Community or for Fun - staying in the game and learning.

In this case returns are not the main goal.

4. Angel Investing to Become a VC

Some go into Angel investing because they think it will help them get into venture.

This is a typical path for exited founders or executives/MBAs.

Generally this is great for showing you are willing to learn on your own dime, you have a point of view and conviction.

Provided you have a portfolio of 10-20 companies or more it would be positively viewed as a track record by VCs.

5. Commitment, Budget, and Strategy

Like anything in life, to be great at Angel investing you need COMMITMENT and CONSISTENCY.

To make money as an Angel Investor you need to have ENOUGH SHOTS ON GOAL.

You need at least 10 hours a week / make at least 1 investment per quarter for this to make any sense.

In addition you need to start with a budget.

While I’ve seen people start with as low as $1k investments, it’s tough to be taken seriously by founders below $10k.

Ideally you want to write $25k-$50k checks initially.

For example, you can start by vesting $100k in the first year into 4 investments at $25k each.

Alternatively, for $100k you could do 10 deals at $10k each.

It is better to make more bets but it also will require more of your time.

Read the rest of this article over on StartUpHacks.