The Best way to be an Angel Investor? Become a member of an established Angel Group of Network and join in lots of deals with other members, investing just a little initially in each one. Let’s say a company was looking to secure £250,000. That should be provided not by one of two really rich individuals, but by 10 or more individuals each investing between £10,000 and £40,000. Why? Because Angel investing is very risky – as many as 70% of the Angel backed companies in the USA fail to provide a return to the investor – so the reality is, however good that pitch looked, no one, however experienced they are, can pick the winners.
Angel investing can be highly profitable, with organised angels with a portfolio investing strategy achieving IRR returns of 25% (and one Angel friend showing a 101% IRR!). But you must do a lot of deals. Less than 6, and the probability is you will not get any return. You need to be planning to do 15 to 20 new investments over say a 5 year period, recognising that many will not manage to develop as planned. Then be prepared to provide follow on funding only to those that do show real development and in particular customer traction. Don’t keep funding the ones that don’t perform (and they will likely be the majority!). It’s only after the company has been actually operating for a few years that you will have any chance of starting to see which ones are likely to be the real winners.
And the only practical way to be able to invest the necessary cash, and time, across such a large number of investments is to do it as a “team sport”, investing with as many other Angels as you can, providing small amounts of initial funding each, and then building on the successes with more capital. A good rule of thumb is that for every £1 you provide as an initial investment, you need to plan on providing another £3 for follow on into the “good” ones.
Being part of a group has many other advantages. Usually better access to deal flow as the Group will be better known than individuals, certainly more people and brain power to do screening and due diligence and access to much more post investment support.
And why are the Supper Wealthy usually not very good at it? They don’t share the deals, and put too much money into too few companies, and don’t have the time to provide adequate post investment support into a properly sized portfolio. Better to be a team player.