All Things Angel Investing #17

Intangible Angel Weekly: Member Portal & Launch Demo Day

Sep 11, 2020

The angel/solo capitalist onslaught continues - 80 new rolling funds have been launched to-date. As seed and pre-seed deals get more competitive, where do angels turn to level-up? Intangible! We are finally launching our revamped member portal next week. We have hundreds of resources for both investors and the founders we serve. Everything from angel investing 101s, to founder fundraising, to co-founder relations, to strategies on raising money from LPs. Stay tuned for on-boarding instructions later in the week. Slack will continue to be where the majority of the actions happens, but we hope the portal will evolve and increase in value over time. We also have upcoming announcements on deal flow. Net, net, more value for all of you.

Being Talked About:

Where are the Defi pitches at?
What's the best setup to launch my rolling fund website? (Slack)
Allocations.com - a new SPV and rolling fund provider (Slack)
Oper8r on emerging micro-VC strategies
Launch's next demo day is coming up (RSVP)
Mark Rosner hosted a B2B sales workshop for Hustle Fund

Check It Out:

Memos! Bessemer published some old deal memos
Build in Public: Pay to watch Shaan Puri build businesses; and a rolling fund?
This Time It's Different: Laura Yao on how we are not in a venture tech bubble
Exit Potential: A TechStars course to help navigate exits/acquisitions
Fintech Lovers:Analysis of all the current YC batch fintechs
Pod:Amazing investing insights by Michael Seibel of Y Combinator

Interesting Threads:

Semil with lots of data on Haystack funds:

Semil @semil

1yr into Haystack V, unofficial pacing stats: -20 investments -median ownership: 5% -" check size: $650K -" post-money: $13M -% of fund deployed: 21% Incredibly proud of this w/ @ianhathaway_ & @aashaysanghvi_ . So many distractions this year, so much noise, red hot market.

Aaron Frank on mental framework for fintech investing:

Aaron Frank @arfrank

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how to best advise and invest into fintech companies, and over time have come up with a few mental frameworks to assist myself. Here’s one of them:

Deals:

Lots of deals! AI cameras for improving fast food customer service, Peloton meets Kindle for gaming, low-code data orchestration platform for consumer fintech, last-mile internet access for rural communities, designer scooters, fitness and athletic training content for the underrepresented — and more! (#pitches)

Parting Thought:

In commercial real estate “anchor tenants” are prized and competed for with subsidies offered to attract them. Could we move to world where cities target those persons whose networks, skills and capital catalyze innovation and jobs?…