On Angel Investing

So as I’ve mentioned before, I’m really keen to do some angel / seed investing (via iincubate, which will also fall under the radiiate umbrella) in the future and as a result I’ve been following quite a few influential peeps in that space as a way to build up my own knowledgebase.

Up until now, I have zero experience with angel / seed investments and the bit of theory that I do know, I picked up during my graduate studies in Business Management. That being said, I don’t think that angel investing is overly hard to grasp, as it is not much different to any other form of investing (imho as a newbie).

I’d think that it would be possible to make a solid investment decision based on the following two factors:

• Does the idea make sense? Irrespective of how speculative the idea is, if it makes sense and it’s possible to turn it into a sustainable & potentially profitable idea, then your investment should be fine.
• Does the business / revenue model make sense? How dependent are those on external factors & assumptions? What percentage uptake / number of customers do you need to cover overheads?

As far as I understand (and this is my mentality with regards to angel investments), the idea is to take a small percentage of a startup at a conservative price level (so you need to get in early). Based on that, it is thus possible to limit one’s risk exposure with great potential in terms of earning a proper ROI if the idea & business model does gather traction.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, as these are just the thoughts that I have been playing with in my head… I still have a lot to learn obviously and most things I’ll only end up learning with future experiences. In the meantime though, my plan is (as it has always been) to simply wing it and learn on the job…