Investing Through the Startup Noise

As someone who is both seeking my next professional role in an early stage business and (newly) looking for Angel investment opportunities in startups, it is incredibly difficult to determine the high quality businesses given the sheer volume of startups in the marketplace right now.  While there is unprecedented access and information on startups through sites like AngelList, the consequence of this transparency is a ton of noise – anyone can put their business idea out there regardless of its business viability AND its cheaper than ever to start a technology company as infrastructure, hosting and storage costs have never been cheaper.  Gone are the days of VC proprietary access to deal flow, but also gone are the vetting and screening of startups prior to them becoming discoverable.

I wrote previously on some tips for first time angel investors as communicated by Brad Feld and David Cohen.  But the biggest challenge – how to gain access to high quality startups – was left largely unaddressed.

Take AngelList, a site that launched only 1.5 years ago and claims to have facilitated over 8,000 introductions between founders and investors with 400 companies funded through those introductions.  Nearly 10,000 startups and 2,300 investors are listed and have profiles on the site.  Fantastic for access and transparency, but wow, that’s a lot of noise.

So as a job seeker and potential investor, how do I maximize my probability of gaining access to only the highest quality ideas without having to do an inconceivable amount of research?  Well, its different for job seeking v. investing.  I detailed my process for job seeking in a previous post.  Here, I’ll talk about how, as a new entrant to Angel investing, I’m going about gaining access to quality startups and cutting through the noise.

Letting other active Angels know I’m investing.  There’s a handful of folks in my network that are actively investing in startups and quite frankly, have better access and are better connected into the ecosystem than I am.  Sharing with them my intent to invest, including how much per investment and the kinds of companies I’m most interested in is a way to shortcut access to quality deals.  These people include former colleagues, VC’s who invest personally, seed-stage fund investors and others I’ve met along the way.

Building and managing my online brand.  This involves utilizing and being active on social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and particularly AngelList and ensuring my profiles are up to date, comprehensive and consistent across platforms.  “Investor” shows up in bios and short descriptions.  Diligence is not a one-way street, the smartest founders and entrepreneurs research their potential investors so I want to be easily discoverable but in a way that I direct and control.

Leveraging the incubator programs.  These programs in some sense do a lot of due diligence for you first by accepting an idea/founder into their program and second by coaching and mentoring their early progress.  Nearly all of the reputable programs, but particularly 500Startups and TechStars, enable broad access to Demo Day presentations through live streams or blogging and then you can access and enter the investment discussion either directly with the founders or through AngelList.

Yesterday I attended Demo Day for the graduating class of 500Startups, an incubator/investment engine that boasts 175 portfolio companies and founded by prolific investor Dave McClure.  It’s a program similar to TechStars and YCombinator with the added dimension that they will make pure seed investments without the requirement of going through their incubator program.

I was actually really impressed by many of the newly formed ventures coming out of the program (and now seeking investment in the $300-500K range).  There were 31 presenting companies and over 1,000 participating audience members (via personal attendance and live stream video).  1,000 potential investors for 31 companies?  That tells you the dynamics of this market and why valuations are bloated right now, with many of these graduating “ideas” garnering pre-money valuations of up to $5M.  But there were 2 companies that were extremely interesting to me, so I reached out to them on AngelList and within a few hours, had access to their investment materials.  This would have been impossible for me just two years ago.

Did I mention AngelList?  Because I’m not “in the club” of elite investors that have automatic access to all the hot startups without the need to do any outreach, I need a way to 1) broadly market or announce my interest in investing and 2) access startups that I’m interested in.  AngelList is the best and only place for a new investor to do both of these things effectively given the critical mass they have achieved.

Make an investment.  While I’ve reviewed a half dozen companies, including meeting with founders, I have yet to find the right opportunity and I’m not going to part with my hard earned cash just because there is a startup gold rush happening right now.  That said, there are a few opportunities with founders I already know well that I anticipate will close in the next few months.  The point here is that building a track record as an investor is, or certainly should be, important for founders to accept your money.  This is particularly true in the current market where entrepreneurs have a choice of investors.  Why not choose money that comes from people who have demonstrated picking winners and who can add value through advising or introductions to their superior networks?

This process has worked pretty well for me, I’m curious to hear how other new investors are getting into the market and accessing high quality startups?