Angel Investing (2): It's Personal

This is part of my Series on Angel Investing.

So I’ve established in a rather primitive post that I believe the leader/team is essentially everything.  If you’re in the world of start-ups and early stage investing I’m sure you’ve heard this from certain people over the years. I did too. But the funny thing was, hearing it only means so much. You don’t really come to understand what this truly means until you live through it and feel the pain of mistakes you’ve made personally and also through the good times when your decisions have actually worked out.

Wait, did I just coin another aphorism?:

Angel Investing is Personal.

Yes. It’s all about people and human relationships. And just like any other activity involving other human beings it can be a ton of fun and in some cases, quite frustrating.

What it comes down to is finding and backing people who have the right combination of qualities, experience, talent and character and supporting them as much as you can. (We'll get into just what I think these qualities are in future posts).

So if you are looking to get into angel investing you really need to think about this in a profound way. Talk to a bunch of experienced angels before you dive in.  Most of the time we hardly realize how little we actually know when we start participating in a new activity.

For Part 3 of this Series, click here.