The Super Angel Podcast
00:19:17 · S2, Pranav Sood
[00:19:17] S2: When you choose to say, okay, I'm comfortable having DD light, obviously, right? It gets all the more difficult not to also rely on strong signals from other co investors or established investors. How do you think about that? [00:19:32] S3: I think it's a really hard trade to make. And, you know, as I mentioned beforehand, a lot of my deal flow will come from people who I consider to be better investors than me. I think it's one of the biggest potential mistakes that I could make as an investor, as an angel, which is basically to get FOMO and just Welly in wherever you see some top tier, you know, investor going in first. The reality is, as, you know, Anthony will say, is that even the best VCs only have a very small proportion of their portfolio actually going on to be the level of success that they want to be. And so my view is, of course, you take signal from what people refer to you and what they say, but you also have to have a point of view. I'm happy Anthony knows this. I'm happy to disagree and say, don't see the value in this, or I don't really understand, you know, why you guys are so excited because this is also part of the reason for doing angel investing. It's partly also an intellectual exercise, which is to think about it, you know, get conviction or not, and then have the courage to be able to say, actually, sorry, guys. I I disagree with you on
00:20:33 · S2, Anthony
[00:20:33] S2: on that. I think the part on the co investing side and relying on other people's decisions or signal value or whatever. I think there's an important part to double click on there or maybe just underline, which is some tend to think of it as a lazy approach or that your own intellectual integrity is kind of on the line when you just follow others. But fact of the matter is that the majority of angels are, as you said, a glorified hobbyist. For that reason, there's no one who's going to clap you or pat you on the shoulder for making up your own decision and doing everything in a vacuum. That's not what this game is about. Oftentimes, it's the opposite. Right? Because the people that are... You're looking for signals slash sparring on a deal with are looking on for the same from from you on their deals. Right? So in that sense, it's more of thinking of yourself as part of a symbiotic network where everyone is benefiting from acknowledging that there is power in the network. Anthony, I can see you want to come in on this, so feel free. I think [00:21:36] S0: you can partly solve for that from a sourcing perspective. Right? Like Pranav said, right? You have a network of people you trust that are close to you that source deals for you. So already, you're leveraging, you know, whether it's people that do it full time or people that are within the networks that are partly, let's say, qualifying one layer of your top of funnel, and then kind of you build your own conviction as part of that, which I think is quite interesting regardless. I think
00:21:36 · Anthony, Pranav Sood
[00:21:36] S0: you can partly solve for that from a sourcing perspective. Right? Like Pranav said, right? You have a network of people you trust that are close to you that source deals for you. So already, you're leveraging, you know, whether it's people that do it full time or people that are within the networks that are partly, let's say, qualifying one layer of your top of funnel, and then kind of you build your own conviction as part of that, which I think is quite interesting regardless. I think [00:22:00] S3: it really depends what you're actually doing angel investing for. So if you're doing it purely to get exposure to the asset class, to be honest, my view is you should just be an LP. You know, if you just wanna get exposure to pre seed as an asset class, go give a pre seed fund the money that you'd allocate to it and let them go and invest in a 100 deals on your behalf or whatever number of deals on your behalf. Whereas if you're saying, actually, part of the reason I'm doing this is financial, of course, it is. It's an asset. But part of it is learning. Part of it is networking. Part of it is whatever. Then, you know, what you've looked to get out of it also needs to be a bit different as well. So I I think you have to go back to
00:22:00 · Pranav Sood, S2
[00:22:00] S3: it really depends what you're actually doing angel investing for. So if you're doing it purely to get exposure to the asset class, to be honest, my view is you should just be an LP. You know, if you just wanna get exposure to pre seed as an asset class, go give a pre seed fund the money that you'd allocate to it and let them go and invest in a 100 deals on your behalf or whatever number of deals on your behalf. Whereas if you're saying, actually, part of the reason I'm doing this is financial, of course, it is. It's an asset. But part of it is learning. Part of it is networking. Part of it is whatever. Then, you know, what you've looked to get out of it also needs to be a bit different as well. So I I think you have to go back to [00:22:38] S2: that point of what's the actual reason you're doing this activity in the first place. And that is the perfect segue to go into a question that I always want to hear our guests on, and that is how do you think about LP investments? Because they can be, as you said, the way to make sure that you have good diversified exposure, but they can also be strategic relationships that you leverage in your own angel investing. I'd love to hear how you think about it.
00:23:02 · Pranav Sood
[00:23:02] S3: Yeah. So I've only made one LP investment so far. So basically, everything else I've done in pre seed has been direct. I did that because I think those guys are investing in Preseed across Europe. And I think Preseed in Europe is an area that is... Has the potential for increasing valuation over the next few years. And so they are totally agnostic on sector and so on and more focused on writing lots of small checks in lots of areas that I don't have access to or don't have visibility of. And so to the extent I've done that, it's mostly just because I wanted to get exposure to the asset class and because I think they have a great network that they can leverage for for deal flow that I don't have in those in those areas. But in general, because my objective in doing angel investing is not strictly financial, my preference is to invest, you know, myself and that way try and maintain the relationships myself with the founders to, you know, do the diligence myself to think about it. You know, if I want to be an investor in the future, as I, you know, maybe maybe I would like to in the future, I want to have the opportunity to force myself through that process. And so that's kind of the way I think about it in my own context and why, in general, my preference is just direct investments rather than being
00:24:15 · S2
[00:24:15] S2: an LP. You said that VCs are an integral part of your whole ecosystem around your own investing. I'm curious to hear if you could just add a few words to how you build those relationships and how you maintain them and and so on because, you know, they are an an important part of the ecosystem, and and I think that there's many angels out there that are less close to the VC ecosystem than might be advisable.