
Red flags in emails to angel investors - duck
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/02/red-flags-in-emails-to-angel-investors.html
======
adammichaelc
Sounds like a high-maintenance angel investor.

"A related red flag is asking me a question or mentioning something that I've
obviously addressed in a blog post."

This is a red flag for me from the other side. It comes off as out-of-touch to
assume that because I want investment from you I will read through your entire
blog. I'm sure there's quality information there but reading every post is not
a high-value thing to do with my time as an entrepreneur.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Who said anything about reading every post? There is a search box. If you are
asking a specific question to me I would expect at least a cursory search to
see if I have written on that topic.

~~~
boredguy8
Yes, this seems like the angel-investing version of "RTFM", which is
reasonable in some situations.

------
hythloday
I appreciate this may be the way the author likes it, but I wonder if they
realize quite how asymmetric this is:

Don't make me leave my mail client, don't send me long emails, don't make me
work to find your Twitter/LinkedIn, don't message me if you're not my target
demographic _BUT_ don't get someone to make an introduction for you, make sure
you've got your MVP demo-able, make sure you've read everything in my blog
(and from the comments here, don't ask questions and expect a personal
answer).

Given the primary thing you want from an angel is time (which is another way
of saying that the most valuable trait of an angel is their experience), this
seems like an odd way to market oneself.

~~~
joshu
Horseshit.

An angel is looking for people with hustle. Someone with hustle will find a
way to email me. Not blast me on twitter (along with 35 other people all at
the same time.)

"Make sure you have a working demo" is a pretty reasonable cutoff, don't you
think?

As a known angel, you get inundated with requests; you have to develop a bunch
of quick ways to throw out the majority of incoming traffic or you drown.

~~~
hythloday
None of them seem unreasonable. My point was rather than the only thing the
angel has going for them is the value of their time--the value of their money
is identical across angels. To stress how little of this time is available
("don't send me long emails") to founders off the bat seems, to me, to be an
undesirable quality I would want to hide from founders.

~~~
joshu
I think "don't send me long emails" is shorthand for "communicate clearly and
crisply" - lots of people ramble and I can't be bothered to pick out the one
important detail.

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MartinMond
I like how on his angel investment page here
<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/angel.html> it says

    
    
      Not interested in [...] anything involving physical products.
    

and on the side he lists an investment in WakeMate.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Maybe you can connect the dots there.

~~~
MartinMond
I'm not sure what you mean? It's pretty obvious what this implies isn't it?

~~~
dmix
Most likely that getting WakeMate manufactured was a painful experience and he
wants to avoid physical products now.

------
rayhano
I have found that people are far more responsive on twitter, but the follow up
email (after you have their attention) really needs to be special and
RELEVANT.

Often this is a numbers game. Try lots of investors as each are at different
stages (some have the readies, some may not be interested in your sector, etc)

------
3pt14159
I love this list by Gabriel. I've seen everyone of those mistakes by my
startup friends or myself when we were younger.

I just wish he accepted Canadians in his investment pool. Not that I'm even
looking for investment or anything, but if I was I'd be nice having someone
that actually gets machine learning and big data from the ground level.

It's worth a valuation significantly less (say half to a third) since the
insights he would give and the types of connections he would have (and knowing
the difference between which of whom to introduce since he gets the space)
would be phenomenal.

------
vaksel
how exactly do you personalize an email to an angel investor.

Dropping blog posts etc just seems very superficial...and actually saying how
they'd be the person to help you just makes you come off as needy.

Multiply that by 30-40 people, and it's no wonder it takes people months to
raise funds.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
It can be really simple. Ex 1: I see you invested in X, which is similar to
what I'm doing for this reason, and so I'd love to get your insight. Ex 2: I
read your post on X; we're having this issue now and I'd love to get your
insight on this piece. Ex 3: Given your experience running X, I think you
could help us with Y.

It doesn't have to be long or superficial, though that pre-supposes you do
sincerely need help with Y. If you're just looking for money, then that may
not be the case. But in that situation, I'm probably not the right angel
investor.

------
mahmud
Gabriel is a good guy: approach him.

------
shingen
It's a decent list, however, it's a red flag if my Twitter account isn't up to
date and or if it's non-existent?

Better spec that I own an iPhone and use Foursquare while you're making a list
of obnoxious requirements. Uh oh, I don't even have a Pinterest account yet!

The proper response to an angel that red flags on something like that is:
sorry, I'm too busy doing actual work to worry about whether my Twitter
account is existent and up-to-date, I'm going to pass on allowing you to
invest into my company.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
For the record, I don't own an iPhone and don't have a Pinterest account
either (though I'm guessing you were being snarky there). However, at the seed
stage you're investing in people and a quick way to start finding out about
people is through their online profiles. So no, you don't need those things,
but it makes it quicker to learn about you. Also, on a higher level, if you're
doing an Internet startup I would expect you would be trying out and engaging
in various Internet services. If not Twitter, than something. That said, and
as I linked to in the post
([http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/10/pitch-decks-
are-...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/10/pitch-decks-are-missing-
a-key-ingredient-history.html)), I think conveying personal history in one way
or another is very important.

~~~
shingen
There's a big difference as a developer, between knowing all about Twitter,
it's platform and APIs, having used Twitter accounts enough --- and worrying
about whether I've got my personal Twitter account up-to-date.

I don't have the time to tweet several dozen times per day (what it would
really take to learn anything meaningful about me @140 characters a shot).
Period. It's not worth the time trade. Should I be tweeting so I can have a
couple thousand followers (half of which are literally worthless)? Or should I
be throwing that hour a day into my business?

I could give you a simple bio that would be far more concise and useful than
what you could possibly extract from Twitter postings. And, you don't like
wasting your time either: if you have to scan my Twitter posts to compile a
picture of me, you're going to waste a huge amount of time I could save you
with that simple bio.

~~~
fredsters_s
I agree with your sentiments, but here's the difference: you could write
_anything_ in a bio. And in a CV. That's why socially verifiable information
is always preferred.

When trying to get an idea of what someone is like, flicking through their
Twitter / LinkedIn / HN posts is far more informative and reliable (and
quicker) than reading a bunch of prose they wrote about themselves.

~~~
shingen
Obviously you could write anything on a Twitter feed. People embellish the
hell out of their LinkedIn profiles, just like they might a resume.

I don't believe Twitter qualifies as a valuable form of due diligence for an
investor. Should Zuckerberg be worried about what Wall Street thinks of his
Twitter account? One post in three years probably implies he just isn't with
the times.

<https://twitter.com/#!/finkd>

It's not looking good for Zuck.

You know what's a lot more reliable than me tweeting about Whitney Houston's
death? The product I create and show you. Brass tacks. The rest is a
superficial sideshow.

~~~
fredsters_s
Are you equating a cold-calling investment prospect with Mark Zuckerberg?

 _I don't believe Twitter qualifies as a valuable form of due diligence for an
investor_

No disrespect, but you're belief is incorrect. Anything and everything about
you online is used when doing DD. Of course, if your product is fucking
awesome, then the fact that your Twitter stream is empty is irrelevant. But if
your product _is_ fucking awesome, you aren't cold-calling VCs. VCs are cold-
calling _you_.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"Anything and everything about you online is used when doing DD."_

Having what, for all intents and purposes, is an employer judge - or worse yet
_misjudge_ \- me based on my interests, or the articles I read is precisely
the reason I'm moving away the merger of my online/offline lives. I recently
put my money where my mouth is and deleted my Facebook account.

> _"However, at the seed stage you're investing in people"_

This always sounds like horseshit to me. Can some one point to some good
examples where this model has been truly successful? Why aren't VCs actively
recruiting college campuses, then? It seems like you're missing out on a huge
chunk of great candidates if you're always selecting "people" from a small
subset who are seeking funding for their (possibly terrible) technology
startup.

~~~
fredsters_s
To see _some good examples where this model has been truly successful_ , see
every successful VC fund and accelerator ( _especially_ YC), ever. Also, I
totally agree re prospective employers, from an employee's POV. But don't make
the mistake of conflating Investors with Employers. The two are very different
beasts, looking for _very_ different attributes.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"To see some good examples where this model has been truly successful, see
> every successful VC fund and accelerator (especially YC), ever"_

I don't know everything about these incubators, but are you telling me that
these guys and gals apply and get into the programs without an idea for a
startup? That isn't how I thought it worked. I think that's how people like to
_think_ or _claim_ it works. But I'm not sure it's the reality.

And, if I tried hard, I could probably come up with an example or two where
the opposite happened: VCs banked on the talent behind a company with a not-
so-good idea, and it "failed".

