Jed Ng: Angel Syndicate Strategy, Venture Winter Advantage & Fixing Angel Education - E568

"I see venture as possibly the only asset class where you could systematically make outsized returns, right? Mm. The outsized returns are the multiplier returns. Mm, yeah, which basically negates a lot of the other asset classes, including, well, real estate, unless you have a long enough holding horizon, right? Mm. Because, like, the time equation is really important. Right. I don't think it's a guaranteed return, but I think it's systematic in that it's statistical that you could reach those outcomes through, you know, kind of sound investing principles, like seeing enough deal flow, all of this stuff, right? It literally is one of those things where you just need the one deal. Mm. Literally that pays out, right, and it's just a game of probabilities." - Jed Ng, Angel investor

"I think it's maybe also the universe giving me a sign that 'Well dude this is not your path,' which is fine, and so over the last four years I've learned an incredible amount about this structure. It's very nuanced, it's very complicated, it's a very fascinating vehicle. But let me net it off. Why do a syndicate versus a fund? On a personal level, it's timing. I talked about my ambition that, you know, within three years I want to be able to be in a position to retire. I'm not saying that I would, but I just like to be in that position that if one day I said 'I had enough,' if you do a fund it's a 10 or 12 year commitment, so you have to stay the course. And for me, I like the optionality. I would start a fund under different ambitions. That's a whole other topic, but anyway, with the syndicate, what's good and bad, right?" - Jed Ng, Angel investor

"What does it mean that we say, you know, it's all about the team? And I don't know, right? It's still a very subjective thing, but I think the subjective things, these soft skills, like characteristics like, is somebody hard enough to want to build a company and a venture-scale company? It takes a certain kind, and I don't think everyone is cut out for it. I think that we live a bit in a world where venture is romanticized in some kind of unhealthy ways. One of these is like, 'Oh, we gotta help all the founders,' or 'Everybody's got a shot, ra-ra-ra.' And I was like, 'No, some people are not cut out for it.' It's not a value judgment on the individual. They're not bad people, they're not lesser people. I'm just saying it takes a certain kind." - Jed Ng, Angel investor

Jeremy Au chats with Jed Ng, founder of AngelSchool.vc, about why he chose angel syndicates over VC funds as a faster, more flexible path to financial freedom. They discuss the current venture downturn as a rare opportunity, the gaps in angel education, and how Jed scaled his 1,400-member syndicate globally. Jed also shares how he evaluates founders and the hard truths of building solo in Southeast Asia’s venture scene.

1. Syndicate over fund by design: Jed explains why syndicates offer faster execution, greater flexibility, and more personal freedom compared to the 10-year commitment of VC funds.

2. Angel investing as a freedom strategy: He views angel investing not just as a financial play, but as a path to independence through systematic access to outsized returns.

3. Downturns are entry points: Jed frames the current venture slowdown as a rare opportunity—where long-term investors can “buy the dip” and build for the next upcycle.

4. Angel education is broken: While founders and VCs have support systems, angels don’t. Jed built Angel School to give new investors real tools—not just theory—to operate effectively.

5. Built global from day one: His syndicate scaled to 1,400 LPs across 14 countries using digital tools and inbound growth, proving that solo-led syndicates can operate at global scale.

6. Diligence isn’t just data: Jed looks beyond pitch decks to assess founder-market fit, sweat equity, and grit—focusing on long-term behavior over short-term polish.

7. Founder romanticism is risky: Not everyone should raise venture. Jed calls for filtering out hobbyist founders and backing only those who demonstrate true commitment and resilience.

(01:00) Hey, good to see you back, Jed. Been a long time, Jeremy. Now in a different country. I know, you were in Japan, there was a pandemic going on, everybody was working from home. And today we're in person, no masks, and obviously you've made some big moves since then, so I thought it'd be a good time to catch up.

Yeah, that's awesome. Also, interest rate environment has changed a lot. Life has really changed, you got kids and you're like, no, there's just ways of change. That's the most important thing. Also, capital has gone up. That's like the most important change of all.

But yeah, so, you know, obviously things have changed a lot since then, obviously. So, like you say, cost of capital has gone up, it's a new U. S. administration, inflation, COVID— all kinds of different things. But before we kind of dive into all of that, why don't you introduce yourself? Yes. So nice, nice to be here again, Jeremy.

Thank you for having me. So previously as a tech operator, after leaving a corporate life, I built the world's largest API marketplace with a startup that was backed by Andreessen Horowitz. (02:00) From there, turned Angel investor. So, I've always raised balance sheet capital. At this point in my career, got an exit.

Two companies at seed stage have turned unicorn, including touring.com which very exciting week for us. They just announced the Series E 2.2 billion valuation. And from there I went on to one of the scales up during the pandemic. And that was when we first met, and when we first spoke, started building my own angel syndicate.

Uh, today we've grown to 1400 LPs, uh, and we're still scaling like hell. And the thing I'm working on and spending my energy on these days is angelschool.vc. We think of ourselves as an accelerator for investors, the same way they're accelerators for, uh, founders and startups. Yeah, fantastic. Uh, and so, you know, for those who are interested in hearing about your story and a little bit about that, obviously you can check out your previous episode, uh, to do that.

Uh, but of course, we'll have to recap a little bit here. It's like, why did you decide to, you know, um, build (03:00) this initiative? Because, you know, you're at Rakuten, uh, you had a corporate job and then you decided, hey, I want to build this, uh, resource and school incinerator for indoors and investors and LP. So, could you share a little bit about that?

Yeah. There's a lot of different parts to the story, right? And there's different parts of like kind of ambition, but, um, just to kind of recap some of the main points for me, when I started doing venture, it honestly was, comes down to, to my two primary goals in life. Number one is I don't want to work for other people.

And number two, I want to be in a position to be able to retire early. Honestly, this is like everything that fuels me. Venture, I think, is one of the few, if only, asset classes that I can think of where you can systematically achieve outsized returns to make those things possible, which is why I started and learned again. Going from an Angel to building on syndicate, becoming what I'm going to term a "Super Angel", is really about scaling, right?

Traditionally, we think about venture. There's two ways to scale. You can think (04:00) about building a fund. That's the more traditional established and sexy path to be honest. But there's this other weird esoteric thing called a syndicate, which I went down and we, that's a whole other discussion. But I've used that to build my own investor network, scale my capital,

so the risk reward in my view, if you're going to do venture as an Angel anyway, no brainer, absolutely no brainer. So, then that brings us to the angel school story. Why, why do this? You know, one is it's part of our strategy and our flywheel so there is a strategic element to it. But more importantly it is the mission, right?

The mission is that getting, going in venture, learning venture as an individual as an angel, It's actually really hard, right? I have this thing I called the poker analogy, which is for most investors, Angel's Learning Venture, it's like going to a casino, buying real chips, and playing poker against the house when you're not equipped to do so, right?

The odds are drastically against you. So, I want to (05:00) solve that. I've been through that myself. And you know what? It's remarkably common how this is the path to learn. And so, part of the mission is, hey, you know what? We want to make this venture a more safe place and basically educate people how to go about it safely.

I think there's another element to the mission which is around venture ecosystems. If you look at venture ecosystems around the world, I think we have the balance wrong. So let me qualify what that means. All the attention focus is very much founder and startup centric. We gotta help the founders, we gotta do this, we gotta do that.

And that's great, nothing against it. But we treat the capital side of the equation as a fixed sum game, right? We kind of go, go find the angels, go find the VCs and period. And so if you buy into the argument that I'm making that, you know, there's only so many VCs. And it's really hard to like learn venture as an angel, then what we should be doing is creating that market.

I firmly believe that in venture, capital availability is not the problem. There's plenty of capital (06:00) even today. You know, as I'm complaining about a high-interest rate environment, there is plenty of capital. The problem is that it's sitting on the sidelines. So how do you unlock that? I think education is the key.

So, a lot to unpack there. Uh, I think the first thing you said was that you felt like Angel as an asset class was a no brainer as part of your financial independence goals. And I think I want to kind of unpack that statement first because, you know, I think people say that about all kinds of asset classes, right?

So, people say, you know, um, buying houses and real estate is a ticket to financial independence. Other people would say like, you know, buying an ETF to index the US stock market is a no brainer. So, you said that you think that Angel is really part of that story. Could you explain how you see that as an asset class?

Yes. Yeah. So, to qualify the statement, I can't remember the words I actually said, but, um, I see venture as possibly the only asset class where you could systematically make outsized returns, right? The outsized returns is the multiplier returns, (07:00) which basically negates a lot of the other asset classes.

Including, well, real estate, unless you have a long enough holding horizon, right? Because like the time equation is like really important. Right. Uh, I don't think it's a guaranteed return, but I think it's systematic in that it's statistical. That you could reach, you reach those outcomes through, you know, kind of sound, uh, investing principles, like seeing enough deal flow, all of this stuff, right?

It literally is one of those things where you just need the one deal. Literally that pays out, right? And it's just a game of probabilities. And so, let's talk about those probabilities, right? Because, you know, I think that during the zero-interest rate era, which was the big change between then and now, it felt like it was very much more a sure deal that probabilities were good and there were outsized returns.

And today I think there's more pessimism, there's still I would say a startup funding winter, definitely Southeast Asia. Actually, probably the rest of Asia as well. Uh, I think U. S. obviously it's spring, I think it's coming back. I'm just kind of curious how you think about that. Yeah. I (08:00) agree with you, right?

The data we're seeing in the U. S. definitely green shoots, but still later stage companies, Series B onwards, really rocky. Europe, Asia, same. Right? It's still funding winter territory. An easy proxy, I like to look at this environment is secondary transactions as an index, 

Right. Usually those indices, we see the transaction value relative to the last funding round and by and large median deals still take sharp discounts, which says to me, it's like, well, this is still funding winter territory. I would pose what you're describing. in a different way.

Yeah. Which is that if you think about the venture run up, right, since 2011 to 2021, US VC, we had annual deployments of capital go up 9x, right from about 45 billion a year to 345. And now we have this major correction, right? We basically have a 15-year run up in the market, even during the pandemic, right?

As traumatic, a collective global event that was. It really didn't (09:00) dent venture that much, right? There was this six, seven-month blip where everything was in the toilet and like sentiment was just through the floor, right? And operating a syndicate.

You really feel it in real time. It's not like a fun right you can still get deals done. But then it came back, right? We had the web three wave and then deals were still getting done. Some honestly like ludicrous deals. So this funding winter really is like the first major generational market correction in a decade and a half.

So, you can look at it two ways: one is, it's terrible. It's horrible. Everything's like going down or you can see this as buying the dip, right? And it comes down to the individual. Are you long on venture? If you are, one way to see this is there's actually no better time to start, right? You're buying the floor of the market, and I think, you know, the timing is right.

So that's my take on it. Buy the dip. That's, it's like, this is not investment advice. Buy the dip. Exactly. My lawyer's like sitting on the side of the room here, he's like shaking his head. I mean, talking about overall market, so I don't think you (10:00) refried any rules as long as buy and video, or buy something.

But, you know, I think there's really kind of like the, you know, it's like this, the optical illusion, right? Is you see an old woman or do you see a young lady in the optical illusion, right? So right now, I think the market is bad. And so, the question is, is it a dip or is it a more long run thing because of interest rates?

Um, and I think what's interesting is that, um, during this timeframe, you also, um, chosen and you didn't build a VC fund, right? You chose to focus on Angels and Angel syndicates. I was kind of curious because you know, that's a lot of, I would say, opacity around that process of whether should I build a fund? Or should I build a syndicate, even from a founder's perspective, it's like, why is somebody running a syndicate instead of running a fund, right?

Yeah. So, could you share a little bit more about that? Yes. Um, so cards on the table, being honest, because I believe in being like transparent, right? I don't want to oversell things, and I recognize very much my brand is around. Jed's the guy that knows syndicates better than anybody else, right? (11:00) That's my brand.

So, I don't want to oversell that. The reality is like when I started wanting to learn venture as an investor, I couldn't get hired by any VC firm. Interested. It seemed like any, a lot of people, but the reality is that there are far fewer jobs than there is interest for, right? So, there's an imbalance.

I don't say it as a woe is me, I've been shortchanged by the world way. I'm just, you know, it's a statement of fact. When I built up my initial track record, the data points, things that gave me conviction personally to say, I think I can be successful getting to the next level. There's this pandemic and it would be a fool's errand to try and raise a fund

right? That's the reality. I think it's maybe also the universe giving me a sign that, well, dude, this is not your path. Which is fine. Um, and so over the last four years, I've learned an incredible amount about this, structure. It's very nuanced. It's very complicated. It's a very fascinating vehicle for me.

But let me net it off. Why do a syndicate versus a fund? On a personal level, it's timing. I talked (12:00) about my ambition that, you know, within three years, I want to be able to be in a position to retire. I'm not saying that I would, but I just like to be in that position that if one day I said I had enough.

If you do a fund, it's a 10- or 12-year commitment. So, you have to like stay the course. And for me, I like the optionality, you know, I would start a fund under like different ambitions. That's a whole other topic. Uh, but anyway, um, with the syndicate, what's good and bad, right?

I mean, my big categorical statement on this topic is that funds and syndicates have different characteristics. if you understand those characteristics, you play the game to your advantage. This is like my message. It's not that one is categorically better than the other. Um, so what do I like about syndicates?

One is flexibility. You theoretically can do any deal under the sun. I'm not saying you should. You probably shouldn't, but you could. Not being locked into a sector, a fund mandate. It's really powerful. It's one of those things that isn't an (13:00) issue until it becomes a problem, right? Think about PropTech funds.

They came up in like 2014, 2015 in the wake of like WeWork's success. And suddenly the company imploded and unraveled. If you had a fund, you're done. And nothing to do with you, just the sector shifts against you because of some you know, black swan or idiosyncratic event like Adam Neumann, right? So there's the flexibility argument.

Um, second is go to market time. You can pull together. If you do the work, a syndicate, launch your first deal, hit a hundred K raise in three months. If you do the right things, if you set up the right way. I've seen it happen. I've trained 20 syndicates at this point in 14 different countries to do this.

You take that versus raising a fund. First time fund manager doesn't have the pedigree, doesn't have the experience. They might spend two and a half, three years doing it. So, it's a lot of time on the sidelines, not getting deals done. You maybe are operating a small fund as a first-time fund manager.

Economics are not great. It seems like, yes, you have dry (14:00) powder and that's a plus because you can like really make smart decisions or quick decisions, but you're also constrained by capital. At that scale, your check sizes are not bigger than a starter syndicate, which I, my ambition for all the syndicates I train is, look, hundred thousand dollars or more.

Otherwise, it's kind of not worth it. Then there's the economic argument. A syndicate has an economic structure advantage over funds categorically, right, which means that If a fund and a syndicate invest in an identical portfolio, which is an assumption by the way, but apples to apples comparison, the syndicate will always make more in terms of carried interest.

Why? Because you have deal by deal carry instead of portfolio carry, right? So, in that case, in a way, like classical power law applied to venture, doesn't apply to the syndicate. You kind of get to break that rule. Uh, and then maybe the final argument is scale. My great (15:00) experiment is how big; how quickly can you grow a syndicate as a capital deployment vehicle?

And we're pushing the state of the art, right? Because most people go, okay, syndicate, a hundred, 200 investors, maybe they write a hundred, 200 K checks, that sort of range. Yes, I think this is what you see as the median. Look, we are at, my network is at 1400 investors. They're literally spread around the world.

Today, my investor acquisition is completely inbound. New people come asking for access to our deal flow. So, we have a self-reinforcing flywheel there. And it's hyper efficient. My tech spend on managing this community is $60 a month. And up to now, as you know, I have no team. And I think I can, given enough time, I can five or 10x this.

I don't think we're at headroom. Right. So, it's all of these arguments stacked up together. That say, okay, this isn't a terrible deal. So, let's kind of double click to some of those statements. Right. So, one statement that people could have is like, so what are (16:00) the benefits of setting up a fund versus over syndicate? Because everything you shared is the benefits of a syndicate fund.

But you know, PR is going to ask, what's the counter argument to that from your perspective? Yes. An argument on a fund. Why would you do it? One is, uh, dry powder that you can control, like make capital calls. Generally speaking, it holds, but not always the case, right? Because in this funding window environment, I know GPs who have LPs that committed capital.

And they make a capital call and they're like, nope, not going to do it. What are you going to do? Yeah. And you actually have no recourse. Yep. But that's pretty extraordinary. But anyway, the point is with a fund, you have dry powder. You get a company; you can make decisions very quickly. You get management fee every year to pay yourself so you can live off it, right?

The cash economics are more sustainable, which is great, but that only works at sufficient scale. You know if with a small fund after paying your admin fees your operating costs, It's just not that much cash. So again, what's the point? Um, (17:00) I think There's a branding prestige element, you know, no startup says that they're syndicate backed, but they will say they're venture backed, right?

That's true, true. No one's going to be like, wow, I was backed by a syndicate. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. So, I mean, there are advantages for sure. Um, and then maybe the last one is like with a fund, it's like scale. Funds can go into like hundreds of millions, even billions of AUM. I don't think like a syndicate can get out to like beyond nine figures maybe.

Yeah. Gotcha. And so, you know. Let's double click to some of that as well, which is that, you know, you also chose not necessarily also you are an angel, but you really believe in the power of syndicates, right? And I think syndicates adding some people also feel like there's a coordination problem, right? So obviously community.

That's a positive way of looking at it, but it's a big coordination problem because there's like, what, 50 people, 100 people, people trust each other. You know, people say it's a good deal. Other people shoot it down and say it's a bad deal. So, I'm just kind of curious, how does that community or coordination (18:00) happen from your perspective?

Uh, I make a distinction between Angel networks and syndicates. So, this is like my own view by the way, not a commonly held kind of like industry view. So, I want to qualify that. Um, I see syndicates as version 2.0 of the Angel network. And what I mean by that is that you think about the classical Angel network,

it's physical community offline, localized people get together in a room and then, you know, they meet each other, they talk about deals. Uh, they have social hours, they have pitch nights, whatever. Um, nothing wrong with that. It's just like the modality. Uh, what's wrong with that or what are the, not wrong, but what are the potential drawbacks with that?

One is that I think when you go to kind of like social to community It's people gathering and like you kind of lose the element of like getting deals done. Some Angel groups, I think it's a fallacy that they do diligence, or they make decisions in a group. Some, some form of decision making in a group. Which I don't think works.

I'm (19:00) skeptical against it I'm not going to name names, but I know some groups that operate locally in Singapore, and they say, I've been told, Oh, the way we prefer our angels to be trained is to just do diligence together. I'm saying, 'okay, stop. Um, I'm really trying not to sound like an ass here, but you're saying you're going to get a group of people who aren't seasoned angel investors, don't have a common framework or way of working.'

And you're going to put them in this totally social environment and in a group, in a social setting and say that we're going to make the best decisions together. I think what you're actually doing is creating a false sense of security, right? Because it's very hard to say negative conflicting things in a social environment.

This is just the nature of human dynamics. So, for all of those reasons, I think it's a drawback. For me, the syndicate definition is like somebody's got to lead the charge. Somebody has to have an economic incentive. To get deals done there on the sharp end of finding companies, doing the diligence, packaging up all this information, doing the hard work around (20:00) it with the no style of driving towards the deal.

The community element, the social element is less. Like I don't really organize social activity to get together. It's like, it's not my thing. I mean, I would like to, don't get me wrong, but it's just as whole so much work, so much coordination, right? I'm trying to avoid that. And so, the modality is different.

Um, I think then we've had to kind of build some innovations around it to make this possible. So, some of them, uh, for example, if you have a deal classically as an Angel network or even some syndicates, there's too much one to one, right? Is this paradox where investors by their nature are very relationship based?

To develop trust, and if you have the trust, this is how you get engagement on a deal. That core mechanic will never change. But if you have to tell every investor, every time you have a deal, it doesn't scale. So, we've had to innovate, figure out our own processes, our own best practices, so that today, when we do a deal, 95% of the time, it's completely self (21:00) service.

In fact, I'd rather not talk to investors one-to-one when I have a deal. Because we start getting into like, I don't want to be pushy, right? It's like, I think the deal is great. The research is good. It's up to you, right? That's kind of like my style. So yeah. So that's kind of my, my take on this. 

And I think it's interesting because there's a whole group of providers doing SPVs and some of this coordination stuff that was, I think made it difficult to have these syndicates in the past. I mean, SPVs special purpose vehicles used to be pretty difficult to create and host and manage, but now they seem to become more automated, more tools.

Are those things being easier for the syndicates? Or is it like, yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent, right. I see the SPV, whether it's a standalone administrator or part of a syndicate platform, or part of a platform like, you know, AngelList or recently I met Cheryl Mack who runs Aussie Angel.

She's doing some very interesting work as well. Um, these are enabling technologies. We can't do what we want, like I do not want to spend (22:00) time coordinating, you know, a lawyer with a corpsec, with a tax accountant, right? And SPVs, they take care of it out of the box. You pay them a fee. And I'm like, 'great, go do it.'

You know? I think what's interesting as well is like these SPVs often are very kind of like geographically bound, right? So AngelList feels like it's very much focused on the US market, but not a very good vehicle for Southeast Asian deals or for Southeast Asia Angels who want to use those tools. Do you have a theory about what's going on

with this fragmentation or do you think eventually it's a matter of time before they all like merge into this super global SPV app? Because I feel like it's a no brainer eventually, but it just seems like everything's all fragmented. Yeah, it is fragmented. I disagree on that view that there will be convergence.

Ah, interesting. Yeah. I think actually there will be divergence. So, take the example of like AngelList, far and above the largest, let's call it a syndicate platform right now, making a distinction from the SPV (23:00) platform. As a syndication platform, AngelList is like, number one, everybody recognizes it. To operate in India, they had to spin out a different entity.

AngelList in India is a completely separate vehicle for that local ecosystem. Uh, why? Regulation. Um, all of these things are very nuanced. These are difficult problems to solve. I don't think they are technology problems to solve. So for that reason, I think that there's going to be clusters of SPV providers, there's going to be one to two top players in every market, three at most, right?

So in the US, I think the players have emerged in UK and Europe. Also, we've got leaders emerging in Southeast Asia. So, I think that's the pattern that we see, right? You have these local service providers that are going to like service the market. Of course, you know, somebody large enough, if they wanted to, could like scoop up all these properties.

Um, you know, like Quarta would be a good example, but then again, you know, incentives wise, like would they, do it? I'm also not sure. Yeah, makes sense. (24:00) And I think what's interesting is that you're also in the business of, you know, helping people build out those Angel Syndicates. And then you also run a syndicate of your own as well.

So, I'm just kind of curious, like, you know, how and what have you learned in building these two businesses over the past four years? Uh, you know, I'm sure that things they've learned or things that you change your mind on while building these two businesses. Yeah. So, to qualify the two businesses would be like Angel Schools as a, um, uh, an education entity and then the running the syndicate itself,

right? Yeah. Um, there's been some evolution with Angel School. The conception of Angel School was that we're going to serve syndicate leads. Why? Because I think it's a market gap. In fact, today we're the only ones that do syndicate specific education, like in terms of venture programming. I'm not talking Singapore or Southeast Asia, I'm talking anywhere.

And it's always kind of like struck me as an odd thing, right? Like why is there programs for (25:00) Angel investors and then VC funds or fund managers but not this thing in the middle? Meanwhile, this group of users in the venture ecosystem, probably, finger in the air, deploys about 10 billion a year.

So, the question becomes, hey, have we found an underserved market segment that is somehow moving 10 billion of capital? And it sounds like a lot, but again, venture peak, 345 billion deployed, just in the US. So, is there a market here? You know, my bet is yes and that was the initial conception.

Now Angel School as an education business, we've broadened, right? I kind of characterize what we do as an accelerator for Angels the same way there are accelerators for founders and startups. We work with investors from 0 to 10. So, we have separate offerings. Zero to one is learn "bread and butter Angel investing skills".

Venture skills as an individual, not as a VC, because the perspective, as you will know, is like very, very different. Then one to 10 (26:00) is you are an experienced Angel or sometimes emerging fund manager, and you think a syndicate is the stepping stone to get to the next level, and we have a program for that.

What I've, uh, the strategy that we're orchestrating here is that there's a flywheel built in. And if you think about it, it ends up becoming the first flywheel is very obvious. Which is that I have my own syndicate— 1400 investors and it's always growing. Um, the education side of what we do is also about investor acquisition because 100 percent of people that apply to our programs end up saying, "Hey, can I see your deal flow?"

So that benefits that side. So as the investor network grows, there's a correlation with our scale of capital. Right. Um, and with the education side, we've built this as a completely bootstrap business, right? Very consciously taken a decision that I'm not going to accept money from people. I think once you do, it adds a certain level of pressure.

Like you've seen, you've been an (27:00) operator, you've built funds. Once you take a dollar of money, you have a fiduciary responsibility. And I didn't want that to become a distraction, so I've chosen not to. You know, in my learning around on that piece is like how hard it is to build a bootstrap organization.

But if you think about it, you know, 'Hey, we're in this position where after basically about three years of grinding away, we built a six figure P&L. We're profitable. You know, and we have zero marketing budget. It's the community that know about us and they love it. They have such good experience with the programs that they tell their friends about it.

That's literally how we grow. And then like these things make it like super rewarding, right? Which I think is also a lesson in using community as a flywheel, right? And beyond just in a scalable effective way, not just, 'oh, it's a community'. But what do we actually do with it? How does that help you level up?

Yeah. You use the word community as a flywheel twice now. So, what does that mean for you? How is a community (28:00) flywheel? Because most communities are kind of like, 'Hey, we hang out, like you said, socially, uh, we like each other. Uh, we trust each other.' So, what does it mean for you to be a flywheel? So, you're right. Classically, we think about communities as, oh, you know, there's a common bond, there's trust, there's this thematic or common interest. But beyond that, like, how does it actually help, right? And, um, this is like kind of like the mission that I'm, or the puzzle that we're always trying to figure out— how do we do it? 

So going back to the point, there's two parts of the angel School, the syndicate and investor community. And then we have programs education. One flywheel is I teach programs it becomes investor acquisition, so it feeds that. The other thing that we do in our education programs is we say to the investors, "Hey, after you finish the programs, I invite you to join my investment committee.":

Why? It's really simple. Investors don't learn and pay for programs for the sake of learning. They are learning to get skills. So, we need to, to solve that value. (29:00) We need to create a proposition around it. So, we say you finish the programs, you join my investment committee, and all it is, is we're doing zoom calls

once every two weeks. We look at real pipeline together. You get to bring deals to the table. If you think they are investment worthy, you are part of the decision making, right? There's all of these values that they get.

And in our programs at this point, we've impacted 300 investors from 40 different countries. Because the community is so global and so online, I really do very little offline stuff that we organize them into three investment committees. So today, week-on-week, I operate a US team, a Europe team, and an Asia team, right?

Each team has a mandate to look at deal flow in that particular region. So this other flywheel where we teach somebody and then bring them into our inner circle, not just like, 'Hey, see my deal flow', but into our inner circle for them to learn is actually an infrastructure play. We have an active membership today, Jeremy, of 30 to 40 investors that join these (30:00) investment committees.

They show up, they bring deals to the table, they help with diligence. So we get tremendous uplift on this, right? There is enough financial. It's my job. They just, I love this. I'm going to nerd out with it. And so we build a community, give them this forum to do it.

And yeah, it also becomes this uplifting factor in terms of how we source deals, how we scale access. How do we scale expertise, time, which is, if you think about it, all of these are human capital constraints, right? Same like a VC fund. It's so much of it is relationships and all of this stuff, which is a people problem.

It's not a technology problem. So, this is kind of like our answer to it, right? And how community plays a part. And what's interesting is that this is not just obviously a professional change about what you've learned about the business, but also, it's been a personal change as well because now you move from a corporate life.

To somebody who's working for yourself. So, could you share a little bit more about that? Yes, it's hard. Oh. Should we double click on that? (31:00) I mean, you know, because you know, everybody's dream is like, you know, if I had a horrible day with my horrible boss, then I'm like, 'oh, I should work for myself'. It should be much easier, right?

So, see, why is it hard? Yeah, um, one of my favorite books out there is Inventure, Inventure books, as you can imagine, we just stay in these circles. Mark Andreessen wrote this book, um, "The Hard Thing About Hard Things". Basically, it's like if you are a founder and building something and you have nothing working against you, you have no team, no brand, nobody knows you.

All you have is like a vision and hustle and going through that, and it's lonely. You give up a lot. It's nonstop. You don't like to do sales and marketing, too bad. You know, like I honestly personally hate marketing with a passion, right? It's just like, feels like this giant time suck, but you still got to do it.

Um, and so this view has been really kind of informed by our experience. I think (32:00) also, it challenges you like as an individual to like, push your boundaries, right? And to like, hey, confront the hard things, which actually like is a muscle, right? There's no days off here. I think as an investor to sort of like shift the perspective a little bit is, I get it, right?

I mean, bottoms up, build a company with no funding. This is like my first pure play at it. Um, and I now kind of internalize that perspective as an investor as well, because you know, there's, it's one of these tropes in venture say, 'Oh, the founder is the most important thing.' It's all about the team. Yeah, but again, what does it mean that we say, you know, it's all about the team? And I don't know, right? It's still a very subjective thing, but I think the subjective things, right? These, like, soft skills, like, characteristics like, is somebody, like, hard enough to want to build a company? An avenger- scale company at that?

It takes a certain kind. And I don't think everyone is cut out for it. I think that we live a bit in a world where venture is romanticized in some kind of unhealthy ways. One (33:00) of these is like, 'Oh, we got to help all the founders or everybody's got a shot.' Rah, rah, rah. And I was like, no, some people are not cut out for it.

It's not a value judgment on the individual. I mean, they're not bad people. They're not lesser people. I'm just saying like it takes a certain kind. So, I think it's interesting that two parts of it, right? One is about your personal life and other part is your view and founder. So, let's talk about the founder side, which is that, you know, your point of view now is that, you know, It's really about high-performance founders, right?

It's about focusing on that rather than all founders. Could you share a little bit more about that? Because, you know, if you go to any VC website, it's like, everybody says they're founder friendly. Right. So, you know, I'm just saying, you know, the fact that you were saying "some" founders rather than "all" founders is already quite a, you know, contrarian view already, right?

So, so what's going on here from your perspective? I'm even more founder friendly. I'm the friendliest, exactly. Now you're like, oh, I'm not friendly to some of you. but, so, so, yeah, so let's talk about that. Okay, so I'll go back to my point earlier, right?

Around the (34:00) romanticization of venture. For good or bad? If you think about it, this venture run up we've been talking about since 2011, this sector has just exploded. And there are founders being founders for the wrong reasons. They want to put something on LinkedIn, you know, I call it like the LinkedIn CEO, right?

Doing it for honestly, like the wrong reasons. And also, I think raising money for the wrong reasons and then when things get hard, like, 'oh, I'm out.' Right. They don't really have some founders just don't have what it takes to stick with it. And some problems are just hard and painful.

And if you could grind through it. And if, you misjudge that as an investor, you're left holding the bag. You're basically like subsidizing somebody's, misadventure. So. It's ultimately extremely subjective. I don't believe in any of these methodologies or indicators. There's not enough signal to noise ratio for me where you can say like, oh if you do these things you can score founders like oh the pedigree in correlation with their likelihood to be successful, or their work history or there's some like (35:00) quiz or whatever, you know, like it's a dating website and they score them and you can see you could be successful. I don't believe in all these things, right?

But what do we look for in founders? One is like found market fit. Do you know the sector that you're building for because it gives you a fighting chance of actually being successful having a 10x better product service. Second, is seriousness and commitment which is now we get into this like very nebulous gas cloud.

Like what a serious committed founders mean. There's things that are observable, like how much time and energy or sweat equity have you put in to build your company before you raise capital? Which is why I never raised on a pitch deck. I just categorically, nope. It feels honestly a little bit disrespectful.

Go build, show me that you want this, then ask me for my money. Then there's this subjective element of, "Will they stay the course?" Like, do they have it in them? I don't know how to solve that piece, but we put all the founders we work with through the diligence ringer. And philosophically, we want to see founders who have (36:00) enough respect for investors capital that they're like, yeah.

You know what? I'll go through your process. I respect that. and those are the best, techniques or ways that we can think of, right? That's kind of my view, but ultimately I don't know if we're doing it the right way. And by the same token, I don't know if anybody has some magic bullet to figure out how do you solve this question?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth there. And, you know, I think that, you know, founders, the awkward reality is that, you know, less than 10% are going to make it to the top pinnacle. Let's just call it some kind of acquisition or public exit, right? And so, you know, and if you're talking about, you know, unicorn returns, it's probably close to like 2% of the total as well.

So this is like an Olympic level position rather than, uh, pass fail or school where everybody should pass, you know, for example. Do you have any advice to, kind of like, Angels or folks who are like screening founders to screen for grit?

(37:00) Um, well, how do you go about doing it? Because I think founder market fit is a little bit more obvious, right? And due diligence, obviously everybody just do the work, but how do you observe or look for Yeah. Um, the diligence process is important. I think one dimension on diligence that isn't really spoken of in venture as much and I'm not sure how to quite frame it, but it's a really interesting topic is the dimension of time, right?

The more time that you have to play, the better, right? Because it's like more time for maintaining optionality to gather information, all of these things. A lot of this also comes with like leverage, which is why we want to build a large network, write big checks because then, we can play the time, right?

The ideal deal for me is like, well structured ground. I don't want to be like the last money in, you know, I know what you want to raise. I know what you want to do with it. And I'll be like the last 250 or 500 gauge at, right? And then I'm in, go forward. Another way we use the syndicated is actually, to double down,

right? The same way a VC fund would be, (38:00) 'Hey, I invest a bunch of companies, I'll see how they progress, and then I decide what to double down.' We can deploy the same mechanic, right? Like early prese deals too early for my investors, but I have conviction. I'll write a check. We'll see how it plays out and if it

materializes, then we can double down with the syndicate. So that's like another way to like use the time. But the more time that you have on any founder interaction, the better. So, another parallel is I know you've got a good relationship with Xian and the team at Hustle Fund. They have a similar type of way, right, in the way that they deploy capital, like writing undersized checks early out of the fund, see how they perform, through a three, four-month program to see if there's a trajectory before you write larger checks.

So, yeah, I mean that would be another way to play the game. Yeah. On that note, thank you so much for sharing all of the summaries and trivia takeaways. First of all, thanks so much for sharing about, uh, you know, I think your approach to how you see, uh, both the angel (39:00) school as well as the syndicate. And I think it was fascinating to hear about how you see community as a flywheel, uh, and some of the business model, um, and operating mechanics and flows between them.

Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about your own personal experience transitioning from corporate career to being your own boss and the awkward reality that it is hard, uh, you know, uh, in terms of creating your own structure and, uh, taking care of the work that needs to be done and bootstrapping the entire way.

Lastly, thanks so much for sharing about, I think, your advice, uh, to Angels. I think there's a lot of advice on different dimensions, ranging from uh, Angels should be thinking about whether to set up a fund or whether the Angel invests, uh, why you believe you should buy the dip, even though it's not investment advice.

And lastly, of course, about how Angels should go about evaluating and thinking about how founders need to show grit as well as founder market fit, as well as being able to, uh, pass the due diligence needed, uh, to show that it's good deal. On that note, thank you so much for sharing.

(40:00) Thanks for having me, Jeremy. We'll see you in two years.