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I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

news.ycombinator.com

131–140 of 237 posts

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#131
post #124
post #121

I really enjoyed your Reddit AMA http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/azgs6/iama_guy_who_sol...

Ha. Not me, you can tell by the top section. He claims to be happy.

oops sorry. I did see your comment on that thread and didn't check the username of the OP. There are quite a few similarities between that guy's story and you, so I made an unverified assumption.

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#132
post #131
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. Not me, you can tell by the top section. He claims to be happy.

oops sorry. I did see your comment on that thread and didn't check the username of the OP. There are quite a few similarities between that guy's story and you, so I made an unverified assumption.

You weren't the only one. I think I wrote him to ask if he had any rich guy tips. I don't think I got any good ones.

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#133
post #116
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm cautiously optimistic. Bigger, though, is just a side effect of playing a game well, not a goal I really go after for it's own sake. Pick a name out of your Rolodex, any name: I wouldn't trade my life for his for all the tea in China.

Let me rephrase. Something wider in possibility. When I started delicious, I had no idea that it would someday be a company. Instead it was a thing I wanted to make. But it turned out to be very pregnant with possibility. I'd like to see you do something that is similarly wide. Does that make any sense?

I get you.

I'm sitting at home at 3 PM on a Tuesday writing patches to the OSS project that spun out of the day job that spun out of the weeklong project which was supposed to, someday, buy me a video game. We never know what the future holds, right?

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#134
post #132
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oops sorry. I did see your comment on that thread and didn't check the username of the OP. There are quite a few similarities between that guy's story and you, so I made an unverified assumption.

You weren't the only one. I think I wrote him to ask if he had any rich guy tips. I don't think I got any good ones.

On topic. I _really_ want to do this.[1] Whats your opinion? Sent a proposal to kickstarter yesterday, waiting for reply.

[1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351584

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#135
post #26

What maximum % of your net worth would you allocate to angel investments?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

heh, I just browsed Fortune's Formula and read about Kelly math. Excellent -- it's just like playing blackjack -- gotta control your bank.

upshot: if he does well, in a couple years his typical investment size will be $20-$50K. Investment size is a proportion of bank.

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#136
post #119

So far I'm surprised that a) nobody has really asked about exits or returns b) people that have asked questions about their own situations have been incredibly vague c) no questions about background or current work or d) no questions about delicious's creation, founding, and later sale.

Sort of on a): Are non-exit returns ever something you think about? E.g. the possibility of buying into the next craigslist and getting x% cut of some large revenue stream, but never getting an IPO or buyout? Or is that just too uncommon, and/or people with those intentions never cross your radar because they don't seek funding rounds?

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#138
post #134
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You weren't the only one. I think I wrote him to ask if he had any rich guy tips. I don't think I got any good ones.

On topic. I _really_ want to do this.[1] Whats your opinion? Sent a proposal to kickstarter yesterday, waiting for reply. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351584

Sounds like an interesting idea.

A revolution in education is imminent. Better measurement, statistics, and analytics in the real world, better connectivity in the offline world.

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#139
post #138
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On topic. I _really_ want to do this.[1] Whats your opinion? Sent a proposal to kickstarter yesterday, waiting for reply. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351584

Sounds like an interesting idea. A revolution in education is imminent. Better measurement, statistics, and analytics in the real world, better connectivity in the offline world.

[deleted]

Re: I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

#140

I heard you built one website a month, hunting for the right idea, until delicious clicked. Would you ever fund a person you believed in for that kind of exploratory work?

I tried to build something interesting every year. I originally set out to be some sort of expert in social software (I think I succeeded, more or less) way back. In the past I built memepool and geourl and a bunch of other things you've never heard of.

However, I never really had the idea of building businesses, just interesting things. I wanted to get attention (I got myself invited to Foo Camp before I did delicious, for example) from folks outside my industry, as I worked at an investment bank.

I still build some small things here and there. I find it much more difficult to program now, though.

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