Angel Investor

Angel investors write checks from their personal net worth, typically at the pre-seed or seed stage, often before a company has meaningful traction or even a formal fundraising process. Many angels are former founders or operators who bring industry expertise, hands-on advice, and introductions alongside their capital, distinguishing them from institutional venture funds investing other people's money.

Angel check sizes vary enormously, from a few thousand dollars to well over a million for high-net-worth angels, and many organize into angel groups or syndicates to pool capital and diligence on deals collectively, sometimes formalized through an SPV.

Angels fill the gap between friends-and-family money and institutional seed funding. Banks won't lend to a pre-revenue company, and many venture funds consider very small checks not worth their process, so angels are often the first professional risk capital a startup raises. The right angels also change a company's trajectory: a well-known operator's check signals to seed funds that the team has been vetted by someone with judgment, and angels open customer and hiring doors that cold outreach can't.

Choosing angels is one of the few fundraising decisions that's nearly impossible to undo. Every angel goes on the cap table, and a long tail of passive small checks creates administrative overhead, communication burden, and signaling questions in later rounds. Fewer, more useful angels beat a crowd; a syndicate or SPV can consolidate small checks into one line.

In the US, most private startup offerings are limited to accredited investors. Under the SEC's Regulation D definition, that includes individuals with net worth over $1 million, not counting their primary residence, or income over $200,000 individually ($300,000 jointly with a spouse or spousal equivalent) in each of the two most recent years with a reasonable expectation of the same in the current year.