An overlooked attraction of angel investing, compared to most other asset classes, are the fun tax rules around gains and losses on early stage investing. Sounds odd, but it’s true. As we discussed in our guide to angel taxes, the gains from angel investing are often...
Angel returns
The majority of angel investors…diversified funds
The previous posts in this series looked at investors that invested directly through VentureSouth. This included investments made through our VentureSouth Angel Funds. If the last posts were accurate, we would expect an automatically-diversified portfolio to lead to...
The majority of angel investors… part 5
One other point to note in this series: “losing money” in angel investing does not necessarily mean losing all the capital you invested in startups.Of the 10% of investors that lost / are losing money in VentureSouth-related investments, only a very few (less than 1%...
The majority of angel investors – why?
The last posts about the proportion of VentureSouth investors that have lost money in angel investing concluded that only a small minority (10%) of angels investing through our group have lost, or are on track to lose, money in aggregate.That’s not a trivial number –...
The majority of angel investors – some extra explanation
You probably noticed a few italicized words in that last post. Different cuts of data tell different stories, so in the interests of full disclosure here is more explanation of the data I used.Through VentureSouth. This excludes any investments individuals made on...
The majority of angel investors I know have NOT lost money investing in startups through VentureSouth
Following from yesterday: as of writing, 389 angel investors have invested in one or more companies through VentureSouth since the first investment in 2008.Of those 389 angels, only 40 investors (10.3%) have lost money in aggregate (before fees) over their...
“The majority of angel investors I know have lost money investing in startups.”
David Cummings’ post are always thought-provoking. His post a few days ago (about revenue-based financing, followed-up last week) started off in an interesting way.“Investing in startups is a great way to lose money.”“The majority of angel investors I know have lost...
Tracking Angel Returns – piling in?
In a follow up to this post, we need to explain why the 22% annualized rate of return for angels in groups is possible – and doesn’t get “competed away” when everyone finds out about it and piles in. My theory is that it’s very hard to “pile in” to early stage...
Tracking Angel Returns – data biases?
IRRs of 20%+ sound unlikely. If angels were really doing that, wouldn’t they have followed hedge fund managers to Puerto Rico or the Caymans?Maybe - although a 3x return on a $10,000 investment, which is the median investment made by an investor in VentureSouth...
Tracking Angels Returns – the right benchmark
Continue the “tracking angel returns” series… Another objection might be that the S&P 500’s performance over the last 15 years is not the appropriate benchmark against which to judge angels' returns. Fair enough – I just used that for simplicity. Here are some...