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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I believe this a great feature that create "tech hubs". It is the "give back to the community" of tech entrepreneurs.

It is not just a financial decision.

But there's plenty of ways to 'give back to the community' without being the one waving the chequebook. In particular, if you've got the spare time to work on other projects, you can do plenty to help out.

Some folks have more spare money than spare time.

If you've got the spare time, cool, if you've got the spare money, cool. What's the issue here?

I've no issue with angel investing. It does start to irk me when people talk about it as 'giving back to the community' though. That used to be called charity, not investment.

Ok I think that's a reasonable position to have.

However, giving back to a professional community seems like it would run on a different set of fundamentals to giving back to a social community.

Could one not equally apply the argument to non-monetary activities -- giving talks, running events, writing OSS software, etc? That's all stuff that normally falls under the mantle of giving back to the community, yet it often confers resume benefits.

What is it that makes it different?

When you're busy with your new, own projects, time is in short supply. Are you seriously going to complain that people angel invest? It's of great benefit to founders.

"This isn't a personal critique of the OP, but it just seems so very common in general. I don't understand it."

You conveniently elided the preceding part and where he suggested devoting time instead of money. No matter your selective citation his tone was still that of a critique or complaint.

I believe a "proper" angel investing implies that the investor do not only write checks. There is time commitment helping other founded. Successful entrepreneurs turned angel investors is the pinnacle of "smart money" I think

You always have the same amount of time, regardless of your net-worth, so the richer you are, the more valuable time becomes relative to a dollar.

I think a lot of us non-rich guys know this, too. When I was young and had no money, it was harder to give someone a significant amount of money than to spend my time helping them. So I would give my time. Today when someone asks me to help them with something I'm thinking "can I just give you money, hire someone to do it" unless it's something I actually enjoy doing. And I'm FAR from rich.

One of my least favorite things is when a family member asks me for help but they refuse to take money / let me pay for something. They think they're being fair by refusing money but they're actually being unfair because they're asking me for help but not letting me help them in the way that is easier for me, purely because they don't want to feel bad for having taken the money.

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