As we have entered the third quarter of 2022, I’m looking forward to what lies ahead for me as an angel investor. I joined TBD Angels last year, and am proud to be counted among more than 250 active investors nationwide. I’ve already made several investments through the platform, and I’ve been very impressed with the process and the quality of my colleagues there. There are many reasons I joined, but among them is the fact that I can invest small amounts in more deals. My personal “fund” is largely deployed at this point, and I’m awaiting exits, so it makes more sense to me to reduce my investment size, but to still participate in the many companies I believe in. With TBD’s model of spinning up an SPV for each deal, allowing a smaller check size for members, this is a great fit for me now. Because of this, I’ve recently dropped my membership at Walnut Ventures, where our direct investments are typically significantly larger.
So how do I see my time at TBD working? I see a ton of companies, as I’m very open to talking to seed stage entrepreneurs and sharing my opinions about how to best approach their fundraising, whether it be traditional angel scale equity investments, or some of the newer, alternative funding mechanisms such as Revenue-Based Financing, Income Share Agreements, entrepreneurship through acquisition, or Regulation Crowdfunding. Of the companies that I talk to, many meet my current criteria for investment: good potential for improving the world, and often with non-white-male leadership.
My own small investment will not make a huge difference to their equity raise, should they be pursuing that course. So I need to continue “leading with my mouth.” To that end, I plan to bring a lot of deals forward into the TBD process, with the understanding that if they get sufficient support through TBD’s voting and diligence, I will invest as well. I will not bring in any deal that I don’t have sufficiently high conviction that I would not put my own funds into the pot.
This is fully in line with the attitude that I developed after my first few years of angel investing: I don’t believe I can pick winners, but I think I can avoid most of the losers, so placing a large number of small bets is a reasonable strategy. Given that I love seed stage, and that I want to place bets on as many new companies as my wallet will permit, I also am a “once and done” investor, i.e. I almost never do follow-on investment.
To my colleagues at TBD, then, I say that I welcome any and all who will follow me with this program. I welcome your input and involvement with the diligence process (including leading or co-leading the deal), and I hope that some of the deals I propose will appeal to you and that we can fund many worthy companies!