Who are the best Angel Investors

Most of you know I do a lot of work to help new angel investors put their capital to work. Most of this involves helping them walk through due diligence, helping them screen deals, etc. This has been a lot of fun, but I think we can all do a little better!

I have spent a lot of time researching angel investing to help with this goal – assuming I am not the only one in the world with any insight here, I’ve researched the academic data, anecdotal data from other angels, press around which angels were in which deals, etc. There is a bit of a trouble spot though in that angel investing and “what works” in angel investing is even more opaque than venture capital and just as hard to pin down as anything in the economy.

So how can we do better? By opening the doors a little wider and sharing more of the insights from experienced angels and super angels. A great example of this is my recent post on investing lessons from Rudy Gadre & more investing lessons from Rudy Gadre. Rudy truly shared his insights into what worked and what didn’t work, even those posts could be improved upon by getting insight into how he analyzed the people and ideas that rang true for him in his 50+ angel investments. I have a growing list of investment lessons I’ve pulled from the web of some great angel investors in the whole investing lessons series I’ve been working on – but this could be deeper and perhaps who the insights are coming from could be more thought out.

The thought there about who to look at for angel investing insights is an interesting one. Who is the Warren Buffett of Angel Investing? Who can we turn to for deeper insights into how we can pick the right 20k startups out of the 50k startups being funded by angel investors? Should we look at the most active angels like Paul Buchheit, David Lee, Benjamin Ling, Aydin Senkut, Dave McClure, or should we look at the most thoughtful angels like Jeff Bezos, Jeff Clavier, & Paul Graham?

Who are the angel investors you think are the best?

If you could gain some insight into angel investing, who’s insight would you appreciate the most?