Angel investing: Things I wish someone had told me before I started angel investing

Here's how it goes: you will (almost certainly) lose money on your early deals, and you will be shocked when this happens. You will be shocked even if you were intellectually prepared to see your investment fail because the way in which it will fail will almost certainly come as a surprise to you. You will be amazed at the stupid shit that founders do, the evil shit that competitors do, and the completely random fucked-up shit that markets do (like completely ignore products that are clearly superior in every conceivable way!) There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. ...

Here's how it goes: you will (almost certainly) lose money on your early deals, and you will be shocked when this happens. You will be shocked even if you were intellectually prepared to see your investment fail because the way in which it will fail will almost certainly come as a surprise to you. You will be amazed at the stupid shit that founders do, the evil shit that competitors do, and the completely random fucked-up shit that markets do (like completely ignore products that are clearly superior in every conceivable way!) There are a myriad ways to make a company fail, but only two ways to make one succeed. One of those is to make a product that fills a heretofore unmet market need, and to do it better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. That is incredibly hard to do. (I'll leave figuring out the second one as an exercise.)