Ask HN: Startup investment opportunities for small-scale investors?

Hi guys. Like most HN users, I've been following the development of computer/web technology over the last five years, and it seems pretty obvious that this is an area that will keep growing and have greater economic impact.

In a regular economic environment, we would want to capitalize on this by buying shares in companies that have newly had an IPO. However, with the American IPO market being what it is today, the opportunities for small-scale investors (say, for investments around 20000-60000 dollars) are very limited. I guess you could try your hand at angel investing, but it requires physical proximity to a lot of technology startupts. Not all of us live in California. With this investment form, it is also the question of putting all your eggs in one basket, also avoiding the problem of dilution/prefered shares in later investment rounds.

What would be ideal for investors like me would be some sort of angel fund that accepted money from the outside, or maybe a secondary market for trading pre-IPO shares of newly started computer companies. Does anyone here know if there are any options that remotely resemble these things? It's a bit unfortunate that only the really big investors get to join the fun.