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Comment by epi0Bauqu | Hacker News Reader

--Angels mainly through angel investing myself, which I realize most people cannot do.

--Entrepreneurs who have been funded before from going to events and getting intros through other people over the years.

--I really didn't know many VCs. I met a few through entrepreneurship events in Philly. One through an angel friend a while back. And one I worked for 10 years ago.

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Would you say that doing an angel investment (with no prior experience and no ties into the angel community) is a hard or risky thing to do? I've been considering trying it, but basically don't know where to start...

This is a detailed topic, but basically you have to expect to lose all your money, and if you want to be serious about it (with a better expected value) you have to do a lot of deals over a long period of time.

That being said, you have to start somewhere, and the best way to do that is to co-invest with people. I would meet local angels and hook up with them.

OK, co-investing makes sense. And by "risky" I meant more of losing time and nerve cells rather than money (which is an inherent risk), but I guess these are connected.

Well not necessarily. A lot of people are completely passive. They write checks and never look back. I'm way more high touch and like to be involved, and so the time constraints are more significant.

Assuming you know what you're doing or have a sense for what you believe the payout profile to be like, here's some metrics of the payout for N deals.

If you're at all risk averse, you probably want a percentile more like the 10th percentile payout, but this shows 50th percentile.

http://talkfast.org/2010/04/28/angel-investing-simulation-pa...

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