Scott Adams is wrong. There are angel investors who invest in unproven companies, even at the concept stage. I'm one of them, and I prefer to invest in people. There are people who I'd invest in before even knowing what their companies plan to do.
A lot of what gets done in business, including investing, is who you know, reputation etc.
That's how many great investment networks function in fact. That's a premise of investing into people first. If you want to get close to Ron Conway, you can't get near him without having a connection that basically vouches for you. That's all about investing into people and reputation extension.
There are probably as many definitions of angel investor as there are angel investment deals. I think he was trying to make a point about modern gender relations.
It was about both.
Is it convenient to ask if you invest in some decent proportion of first-time founders?
Couldn't that arguably put you in the "friends and family" category?
The "my experiences with product X as diving board for tangential point" is probably one of the less annoying positions on a scale that runs all the way from "pitching hard" to "cleverly designed to disguise relationship to the product."
Don't get me wrong, a lot of them are incredibly gross to witness, but to me this one barely registers.