How to Get Started Angel Investing

The 5 things you need to do

Author

Gale Wilkinson
February 14, 2023

Hey everyone, thanks for being here, this is Angel Insights, a short weekly newsletter sharing the ins and outs of angel investing.

This newsletter is brought to you by the team at VITALIZE Venture Capital, which runs a venture fund and an innovative 425+ member angel investing community, VITALIZE Angels, open to everyone.

Welcome to the first edition of Angel Insights!

In this first edition, we're tackling the question of how to get started as an angel investor.

In subsequent editions, we’ll cover topics such as:

  • Building a brand as an investor

  • Angel investing mistakes

  • Creating great deal flow

  • Getting access to deals

  • Portfolio theory

And much, much more.

So, how do you get started as an angel investor?

Gale Wilkinson, Managing Partner at VITALIZE Venture Capital and an angel investor in 40+ companies, suggests these 5 things:

  1. Calculate how much you can deploy each year into startups. This is typically somewhere between 10 to 50% of your investable cash.

  2. Decide if you want to do direct deals or invest as part of a syndicate. You’ll typically need to be an accredited investor to do direct deals or join a syndicate.

  3. Find themes or areas of focus. For example, at VITALIZE we focus on B2B software within the future of work.

  4. Read articles, books, and social media posts to learn more. You’re already subscribed to this newsletter, so you’re in the right place 😜

  5. Join 2-3 angel groups or syndicates to begin seeing deal flow and hearing how others think about making investments. AngelList has a number of syndicates to choose from to get you started and at VITALIZE we created VITALIZE Angels which is available to non-accredited investors as well as accredited investors.

One other suggestion:

Start as early as possible and commit to a long-term strategy.

Remember, it can take 10 to 12 years to get returns from this asset class and, by starting early, you have time to redeploy that capital again and again.

Thanks for reading this first edition, many more to come!

Justin

P.S. To continue learning, sign up for our free webinar on angel investing happening Wednesday, February 15th at 3 pm ET.

Also, for VITALIZE Angels members, we currently have two live deals, open till February 20th, with a $1K minimum investment.