Chapter 1: 技术进步无可避免

But I don’t invest in this future because I want to sit in an ivory tower laughing at people whose jobs are replaced. I invest in this future because it’s inevitable and I think I can help accelerate the efforts of the founders and innovators who are missionaries, not mercenaries. Of course, I plan to make a great deal of money in these revolutions, but I also plan to look back proudly and know that I helped propel changes that made our planet better.

Chapter 2: 赌一赌单车变摩托

Now, gambling has a very negative connotation here in the West, but when I would spend all night playing poker in Los Angeles, with mostly old Asian men, I would frequently hear them say “No gamble, no future,” before pushing their chips into the pot, standing up, and rubbing their necks and heads furiously (a tic I soon acquired unconsciously).

Chapter 3: 天使投资101

Angel investing is the act of putting money into the earliest investment rounds of a private business with the goal of getting back more money than you put in—much more than you can return in a safer, more established investment vehicle.

Chapter 4: 天使的四种能力

The best angels in the world have four qualities, giving them the ability to (1) write a check (money), (2) jam out with the founders over important issues (time), (3) provide meaningful customer and investor introductions (network), and (4) give actionable advice that saves the founders time and money—or keeps them from making mistakes (expertise).

Chapter 5: 在硅谷投资

Yes!

Chapter 6: 网络效应

We live in a world full of network effects. The nodes in the network here in the Bay Area are the investors (angels, incubators, and venture capitalists), founders, service providers (colleges, lawyers, headhunters, and banks), and the talent pool (developers, designers, and marketers).

Chapter 7: 投资阶段

  • sweat equity: It’s not an official round of funding. It’s the original creation of the business, and, unlike an investment round, the ownership here is paid for with the founders’ own sweat.
  • bootstrapping: A company with sweat equity has built its product or service based on the talents of its team, but a bootstrapped company might have had some outside help—but not from investors. For example, many times the founder of a startup will find a client who is willing to pay for a product that they built with sweat equity.
  • Friends and Family
  • Self-funding: When I meet someone who is going into debt to self-fund their startup I get worried—especially if they have a family. In my mind, if you have a family to take care of and you put them at risk to pursue a startup that you can’t build with sweat equity, bootstrapping, using your friends’ and family’s money, or raising money from a professional investor, you are, in all likelihood, insane.
  • Incubator funding: Most incubators will give founders $25,000 to $150,000 in seed funding for 5 to 10 percent of their startup.
  • Seed/Angel Funding: Most founders get their seed round by successfully completing two or three of the five early-stage funding strategies above. Essentially, your job as an angel is to monitor people coming out of these channels and pick out the best ones.
  • Bridge Round, a.k.a. Seed Plus: This round of funding typically comes from the same investors who did the seed round. Those investors are faced with losing their investment if they don’t continue to fund the startup, so they tend to be motivated to “close the bridge. What has changed since I made my original investment?
  • Serias A: The Series A is the most coveted and important round for a startup because it is typically done by a professional venture capital firm that will join the board and create proper “governance. Pro rata means you get to keep your percentage ownership in a company. Typically when you angel invest, you don’t get pro rata rights—unless you demand them, and then you do.
  • Series B, C, D, E, F, and Mezzanine Rounds: In fact, if your angel investment is starting to raise a Series B, C, D, or further rounds of financing, it’s probably time for you to consider selling some part of your stake in what’s called a “secondary” stock sale.

Chapter 8: 创始人<>天使<>风险投资

Now, in today’s modern age, I think the first $5 million you make is “take the edge off” money. You now have a decade of capital to rest on. However, when you break $10 million you have “escape velocity,” where you will never have to work again. The $500,000 in yearly interest you net should cover your expenses for a lifetime. However, when you get over $20 million, you’re in the “fuck you money” zone, where you can tell anyone to go fuck themselves. It’s a dangerous test of a founder’s resolve in my experience to go from being under the gun to being able to tell anyone who stands in your way to go make you a ham sandwich. VCs really don’t like to have founders get to “escape velocity” or “fuck you money”.

For angels, secondary shares are a wise way to “dollar cost average” your returns. If you have a chance to sell 25 percent of your position once or twice before the IPO, it would be wise to do so because we’ve all seen companies worth billions go to zero many, many, many times.

Being a founder is amazing because you get to build what you want to see in the world and you’re the “god-king/queen” at your company, but the odds are wildly against founders making a huge return, while the odds are in favor of a lifelong angel or venture capitalist getting rich.

Chapter 9: 机会成本

How to allocate your finite time and energy efficiently is something you constantly have to revisit as an investor, founder, parent, and human being. The cost of not revisiting your allocation of time is great, leading to massive regret at having spent too much time on a startup, marriage, friendship, or investment that is destined to disappoint you or destroy your soul.

Chapter 10: 让自己幸运的方法

It’s time for you to unplug from the Matrix and realize that you don’t need to pretend you’re rich by getting the premium channel package, and actually get rich by taking intelligent risks.

Even if the investments had failed, even if people had laughed at me calling myself an angel, even though I was only investing $500 at a time, I would have learned a heck of a lot and met a ton of entrepreneurial people. You can make your own luck in this life by putting yourself next to the people who are already winning.