Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexeichemenda | Hacker News Reader

>Best approach would be to make very few investments

Top VCs—who see the best deals and run deep diligence—still only have a 1–5% hit rate. As an angel, you don’t have that level of access or time. Even if you get strong referrals, you’d need to be 10–15x better than elite VCs to pick winners in a small portfolio. Unless you’re investing in at least 10 companies, it’s statistically a losing game.

My experience: I invested in ~200 companies early stage (with some winners like HuggingFace, Checkr & more).

View on HN

"...and run deep diligence"

I've not seen that much but what I've seen is "Let's ask a few buddies and google a bit".

The takeaway that I agree with is the parent's and OP's point that you will need to invest in a lot of companies, perhaps 30-50, and you will nee to be in for the long term.

    > with some winners like HuggingFace

Is HuggingFace public or acquired? I checked Wiki. It still looks pre-IPO/un-acquired. So, how exactly is this investment a "winner"?

It might not have paid back the initial investment, but the company isn't bankrupt, and you've heard of it.

By the standards of people who invest in 100 start-ups at once, that's success.

You don't need to sell your stake for it to be a winner. It's a winner because his stake in the company is worth significantly more than when he bought it.

Plus the bragging rights: a lot of the angel and VC buzz seems to be about playing for status (versus playing for money).

You see this with celebrities investing, and with the intro "I was an early investor in ____" brag.

A lot of angel investors are not investing particularly large sums, and a lot of what they're doing is buying someone that's going to use services other people they're connected to are selling.

When you're multiples are 10,000x revenue, a lot of people will shell out $10k to get you onto a few startup services...

That's the investment itself. Not getting paid back.

Can’t you just deploy 1/10th the capital and get the same hit rate?

What's your biggest motivation for doing angel investing?

Developing a network of people who do favors for each other and learning about other people’s businesses and industry. Angel investing usually isn’t that capital intensive, so it’s sometimes worth pursuing. I don’t do it to get rich.

At my last startup, I think our board and observers liked hanging out more than they liked talking about the company. It wasn't perfect, but it's their money so I wasn't going to complain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com