Ask Me Anything About Being An Angel Investor

[TheDoubleA]

What are some of the key components that you look for in the people/companies that you decide to invest in?

How do you go about finding these people/companies?

On average, how much time per week do you devote to your 'job' as an angel investor?

What is your education backround?

For you, what is a 'normal' sized investment? What would be the highest size investment that you would be comfortable with?

Do you follow a set of 'bankroll' rules?

How do you go about recieving your interest on your investments? What is the typical turnaround for your investments?



Sorry, I work in corporate finance where I work for a company/family that buys and sells companies as investments. I am sure that it is on a much much larger scale than most people could ever imagine, and I am very interested on how someone does this on an individual basis.

Thanks.

Edited: I am an horrible speller and writer, imo.

[venture]

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If he is serious you guys are wasting a great opportunity to ask questions. It takes a minute to google/wiki angel investors and find out what they do.

I believe I have three stellar ideas for internet businesses. Eventually I'll get around to writing out business plans for them and potentially doing some coding. Ideally if it got that far I'd have 2-3 people to help w/ backend coding, design, etc. Anyway, what is the earliest stage that you've invested in a project? Earliest stage that you saw a pitch for?

[/ QUOTE ]

Heres a good real example.

I met a person that had this idea about a free USPS service to mail out letters to anyone in the united states for free. The idea behind it was every user could send real letters for free to friends family etc. The reason it was free because of local advertisements based on address.

For example. Joe's Cleaners in NYNY is an advertiser for this company. So if someone sends a letter within a set radius of Joe's cleaners their ad is in the middle of the persons letter.

I loved the idea and would of invested on the spot. But you don't only invest in the idea, you also invest in the person. This person didn't seem motivated enough to make this happen and would of wasted my idea.

But if the right person pitched me that idea back then I would of signed a check on the spot.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
If he is serious you guys are wasting a great opportunity to ask questions. It takes a minute to google/wiki angel investors and find out what they do.

I believe I have three stellar ideas for internet businesses. Eventually I'll get around to writing out business plans for them and potentially doing some coding. Ideally if it got that far I'd have 2-3 people to help w/ backend coding, design, etc. Anyway, what is the earliest stage that you've invested in a project? Earliest stage that you saw a pitch for?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have like a dozen, but I suck at you know, motivation and stuff. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[venture]

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So far none of them have flopped and I've made a lot of money doing this.

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so in other words, you suck at your job

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I suppose compared to other angel investors i might "suck" I only made 6 figures this year.

[Keyser.]

Surprised some of you haven't heard the term angel investor--I thought it was pretty common.

What kind of accountability do the people who you invest in have to show? Like you just write a check and they promise to pay back a percent of money once they start turning a profit? Seems risky

[smokingrobot]

where are you located?

[Ikaika]

is it bad that I read the thread title as "Ask Me Anything About Being an Angel Investigator"?

I was so puzzled...

[z28dreams]

How many deals have you gotten involved with?

What was the worst deal that lost money / broke even?

How often are idiots going for venture capital/angel investors when they really shouldn't give away their equity?

For example, I think it would be outrageously stupid to get 25-100k and lose ANY equity share in a company.

[ceczar]

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For example, I think it would be outrageously stupid to get 25-100k and lose ANY equity share in a company.

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well for most small businesses with no assets it's hard to get a loan from the bank for that much. if you need money to pay lawyers or buy computers or get office space or hire some programmers or whatever, you might be in a situation where it's either give away the equity or have no company at all.

isn't there some sort of rule against starting an "ask me" thread and then not answering any questions? seeing as he just registered today, just for this, and hasn't provided any interesting information besides bragging about being worth 27 big ones, i think there's a significant chance he's FOS.

[Wynton]

What's the difference between an "angel investor" and a venture capitalist?