Editor’s Note: It’s “Behind the Scenes” month here at Crowdability. For the rest of March, we’ll bring you deep into a year-long research project we’ve been conducting. Internally, we’ve been calling this project “The Angel Initiative” – and during March, we’ll share the most exciting and profitable ideas that were born from it.
Being an “angel investor” means being one of the first investors in a new company.
If you watch the TV show “Shark Tank,” you might be familiar with the concept.
Angels are critical in helping world-changing companies get started.
Without angels, companies like Apple, Google, and Amgen wouldn’t even exist. Our lives – our health – would look starkly different without businesses like these.
But make no mistake: angels don’t invest strictly because they’re “do-gooders.”
They invest at a company’s earliest stages because they can make fortunes when one of their companies succeeds.
Google’s earliest investors, for example, made 3,000% when the company went public.
Facebook’s first investor, Peter Thiel, turned every $1,000 he invested into $2 million.
And even “average” angel investors earn an estimated 27% each year – that’s more than 3 times higher than the stock market’s average return.
So you might be wondering…
What’s their secret?
How did these angels know which companies to bet on?
These are the questions we set out to answer when we launched a year-long research initiative…
The Transition to Investor
Wayne and I have been involved with early-stage companies for almost two decades. And the financials rewards for that involvement have been substantial.
But the vast majority of our personal wealth hasn’t come from being investors in companies. It’s come from being entrepreneurs – by starting and growing our own businesses, and occasionally, by selling them to bigger companies.
(Wayne sold his last company to a global financial publisher called Agora; I sold my last business to Hearst, the multi-billion dollar media company.)
So when we were starting Crowdability last year and beginning to make the transition from “Entrepreneur” to “Investor,” we faced a dilemma:
We were successful entrepreneurs… but now we wanted to be great investors.
So we asked ourselves:
Who are the best people to teach us about becoming successful early-stage investors?
And the answer turned out to be straightforward:
The people who’ve been investing in early-stage companies for decades: professional venture capitalists and angel investors.
So, over the better part of a year, we leveraged our relationships and rolodexes so we could speak with dozens of these folks.
Over time, they shared their strategies and tactics with us…
And now it’s time to share what we learned with you.
Get Ready For “The Angel Initiative”
During March, we’re going to bring you behind the scenes of our journey.
We’ll introduce you to the folks we met with; the folks whose methods we studied.
We’ll give you an inside look at the time-tested strategies they use to find and profit from the most promising early-stage investments.
And then we’ll translate their wisdom into strategies that you can use to become a successful angel investor.
Internally, we’ve been calling this project The Angel Initiative.
As far as we know, Crowdability is the only place in the world you’ll get access to this type of inside information.
You can’t find it in a book, and you won’t find it hidden somewhere in Google.
This is the only place to get an inside look into the minds of some of the most profitable investors in the early-stage market.
What You Can Expect
For the next 4 weeks, you’ll receive two articles a week from me and Wayne.
Here’s a rundown of what you can expect:
Tomorrow – Wayne will introduce you to one of the most fundamental yet powerful concepts we learned during our research project. It’s an early-stage investing strategy that ensures you’ll never “go bust.”
Week 2 – Wayne and I will introduce you to two of the investors we studied. You’ll be very familiar with one of them – Mark Cuban. And we’ll share a specific secret from each investor to help you dramatically increase your potential returns.
Week 3 – In week three, we’ll dive even deeper into the process the pros use. We’ll give you three specific indicators to look for before you pull the trigger on any investment.
Week 4 – Finally, we’ll wrap up The Angel Initiative with two specific ways to bring all these strategies together. And we’ll be giving away a free gift to all interested readers – so be sure to check your inbox that week.
We hope you'll enjoy it!
Best Regards,
Founder
Crowdability.com
