
Ask HN: Who's angel investing? - shafyy
I know this is not how it works, but the current status quo to find angel investors is broken.<p>Something someone said in the YC Startup Investor School [0] stuck with me (I&#x27;m paraphrasing): &quot;If you&#x27;re an angel investor and meeting founders, think of it as a job interview for the position of the investor. You&#x27;re the interviewee.<p>The status quo to find angel investors is over networking. However, I think this is a huge market inefficiency. Continuing the analogy from before, something like Triple Byte for angel investors should exist. Wouldn&#x27;t it make sense for angel investors to pay $100 or so a month to get super high-quality deals?<p>Wouldn&#x27;t it make sense for founders to fill out a YC-style application on that platform and get matched with angel investors? (As a founder I can answer my own question, which is, yes, it would).<p>Do you know of any such platform out there that&#x27;s not scam?<p>As a quicker solution, maybe something analogous to &quot;Ask HN: Who&#x27;s hiring&quot; might also work?<p>Happy to hear your thoughts...<p>0: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investor.startupschool.org&#x2F;
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louisswiss
There is a __lot __of noise in angel investing.

Remember, professional investors (like VC firms) have a full time staff
handling due diligence, cold pitches etc. Angel investors on the other hand
simply can't handle that kind of deal flow.

I also know several angels who use the current inefficiencies of the seed
stage market as a 'test' for founders. Great founders will find a way to get
that warm intro to you - because great founders just _get things done_.

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shafyy
I've heard that test argument before, and even larger firms like a16z say
that. However, for me, that's more a strawman argument that tries to exploit
the market inefficiencies. They already have all the connections and the
brand, so making it harder for newer investors to get to quality deals is an
advantage for them.

What they don't realize is that they are shooting themselves in the foot. They
are missing out on new and unknown founders. Is there a reason to assume
founder quality is not uniformly distributed? (among founders with and without
a network?).

Furthermore, I think the test argument is just untrue. There are a lot of
people who are good at networking but suck at building a company and do get
investments just because of they happen to know X or Y. I know that the
realm's currency is the people, and I know that people are super important
(like, if you're building a company, it's all about the people), but
networking shouldn't be part of this.

The networking argument just doesn't make sense from an economic perspective.

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1ba9115454
\- "Ask HN: Who's hiring" might also work?

Sounds good. "ASK HN: Who's looking for investment" and you post with a sort
of ASCII pitch deck.

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shafyy
It should be the other way around.

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dgwight
I agree, “Show HN” should work, maybe with some standard way of indicating
that they’re interested in investors contacting them.

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shafyy
No, I meant that investors post about themselves, in what they're interested
etc. and startups can contact them :-)

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dgwight
Haha woops, I think having the startups present themselves would be better
because they have more relevant information and I think potentially having
multiple investors looking at a startup at once would help create pressure for
them to actually invest.

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akg_67
Is the deal flow a challenge for angel investors?

Isn't that what AngelList tried to do, a marketplace for Angels and Founders?
I will suggest researching/sniffing around AngelList business to see what
worked and what didn't work and what could be done differently to overcome
challenges AngelList encountered.

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shafyy
I'm not an investor, but I would _quality_ deal flow is definitely a
challenge. The biggest challenge, probably.

AngelList sucks for finding angels. You can find people that are supposedly
angel investors, but to me, it's not clear if they are legit and mostly there
is no way to contact them. Even if there was, there is no filter for the
angels to increase their deal flow quality.

I agree, if someone were to do this, they should look at what can be done
better. Unfortunately, I don't care enough about this to do it. Currently :-)

Edit: Added part about AngelList

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akg_67
> I'm _not an investor_ , but I would quality deal flow is _definitely_ a
> challenge. The biggest challenge, probably.

You are not an investor and using such definite statements. Hmm... You might
want to consider talking to angels about challenges.

With your criticism of AngelList and replies to other, you come across as
someone who is looking from the viewpoint of a "founder" instead of "angel".
Look critically at your positions and consider validating them.

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shafyy
You're correct and that's what I'm trying to do here :-)

And AngelList does suck from the viewpoint of a founder.

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baccredited
>Who's angel investing?

Me.

>Wouldn't it make sense for angel investors to pay $100 or so a month to get
super high-quality deals?

I pay 20% of profits for 'super high-quality' by going through Angel.co
syndicates and the like. That is MUCH higher than $100/mo and I gladly pay it.

~~~
shafyy
Wow, great thanks for your insight. So, as an angel investor, what is
something that you wished angel.co did for you (except of lower prices)?

