I got my start in software at a little company in Seattle called Microsoft and
I worked on a product called Windows XP for a couple years. After that I decided
to start my own business and I was in the mobile technology space, and so I
grew really successful mobile technology and services business. It was about 80
people serving all sorts of clients across the country and when I sold that
business in 2017 I really wanted to stay connected with the entrepreneurs, with
the startups with technology space across the world and I wanted to give
back to founders. I wanted to help them build amazing companies, amazing products.
Help them through some of the challenges of building companies that I've gone
through myself. So what is angel investing? Angel investing is an investor
who typically invests somewhere between five and a hundred thousand dollars in a
company. The company is usually pretty early-stage maybe they have a product
they have a small team they've made some progress but they're not large enough or
interesting enough yet for a venture capital firm and they're not generating
enough profits or enough revenue to be able to continue the business just on
their own. The show shark tank made angel investing popular and a little more
mainstream but a lot of the things that happen in Shark Tank aren't really how
angels operate in the real world.
To start most angel investing isn't adversarial and at the end of the day
you're really trying to collaborate with other angel investors to make sure that
you're picking winners and you're helping those companies be successful
and what becomes a 15 minute drama on TV usually actually takes weeks to really
resolve in person working with founders to really understand their business and
what makes it exciting and where they honestly need the help... Anyways, one of
the reasons I wanted to give back to entrepreneurs and wanted to help CEOs
and other founders is because something you never tell you when you're starting
a business is that entrepreneurship and being a CEO is incredibly lonely. There's
not a lot of people to talk to you there's a lot of long hours there's a
lot of domains of knowledge that you need to learn from finance, accounting
operations, invoicing, staffing, HR, IT and so on and so forth and a lot of the
financial and operational stress of running the business and making sure
that it continues to be successful is on the shoulders of the CEO. That founder
can't necessarily talk to his peers he can't necessarily talk to his employees
he or she really needs to lean on their network. This is where I think angel
investors or mentors can really make a difference in success or failure of
early-stage companies. So there's a couple of things that founders would really
need in the early days they certainly need money but they also need guidance
and someone who's been through the trenches and seen some of the successes
and failures of other companies before them can show them where those
cobblestones are and where they can really lead to a success experience and
mentors can also open the doors to relationships and networks as well and
so being able to open up a rolodex of additional connections is incredibly
powerful for someone just starting out and not necessarily having built that
network the other reason I've gotten into angel investing is I want to have a
large impact and you can certainly have a large impact by being a CEO and a
founder and starting a business and really owning that business from the
ground up but CEOs can really only tackle one large problem at a time
it's incredibly challenging to spread across multiple domains this
is where angel investors can really dive in and be able to invest and advise
founders across multiple disciplines or areas that they care about. So having a
larger impact is the second thing that's really important to me now third and
lastly... Making money yes making money is an important part of
angel investing but there's a reason I listed it last. Angel investing takes time
and any type of company formation and growth takes time and so anyone who's
looking to make a quick buck on angel investing or funding their cousins or
their friend's startup it's not really how it works
typical angel investments mature over the course of five to seven years and
sometimes longer and so if you're thinking about angel investing or
helping companies you're really in it for a long haul. So if angel investing is
so risky why bother to do it why not just invest in the stock market? Well I
do invest in the stock market it's really rewarding to see some public
companies be successful but at the end of the day Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk...
they're not really calling me asking me for help. (call me) and while I'd love to help some
of the entrepreneurs at larger stage companies the reality is they have
enough on their plate enough advisors and boards and people to listen to
early-stage startups don't have that they don't have that Network they don't
have that depth of experience and so they really can appreciate guidance,
mentorship and capital, for companies to grow. So angel investing is incredibly
risky for every investment I kind of expect that I could lose my money now on
the flip side if I pick a winner if I pick a company that's going to be
successful there's the opportunity to make a thousand times my money so the
reason that money is third is while I don't have a short term view in angel
investing I do think it's important to make capital and make money on the money
invested because that return on investment allows me to fund other
startups other founders and have a greater impact in the world and the
things that I'm doing. So if your startup founder entrepreneur, angel investor or
fellow traveler and looking for advice help or
funding I hope you'll follow along in the journey and let's build something
awesome together. Thanks!