A "small-time investor"

Maybe an "initial" investor, or an early-stage investor. "Small-time" seems derogatory.

It's intentional. I need to keep my ego in check, and remember that I'm only supporting cast. The entrepreneurs are the protagonists.

I just don't know if I could muster the cojones to refer to you as a small-time investor in your presence (I'd have the decency to check that you're not around first).

When I've raised funding I didn't see angel investors as "angels." I wasn't asking for favors. My company wasn't a charity. I wanted investors who believed in what we were doing, not some uncle with money who might think he was being magnanimous.

I know Diego personally and can speak from experience that he's the sort of person that will help you more than most "angels" out there would even if they tried (most don't/can't; spray-n-pray is still in full swing out there, folks!)

Maybe we need a new label that identifies people like him. I'd like to believe that I would qualify for whatever it is that we come up with as well, but others need to decide that.

For many of the same reasons he so eloquently described I've avoided using the "angel" term like the plague, even if some people need the quick epithet to summarize where you fit in this crazy world of ours.

The so-called democratization(/crowding?) of funding is going to bring more, not less, of these types of dumb-money checkbook swinging people out into play. It will end in tears for many, but as long as we are all adults about it, and we don't place those bets with large pools of money that should be directed to a different asset class like fixed income for pension funds distributions, we'll survive yet another period of frothiness and call it a day while we wait for the next one to materialize.

There is no central bank that plays with the valuations of things (ie. price controls) in the startup ecosystem, and that's a great thing, mind you. Yet as long as IPOs like $FB today return not 1 but 3 VC funds in one large swing for the fences, we are all going to be playing this game here for a while.

Pick a side, enjoy the game and don't hate the player but the game (while you try to change it if you can!) We can all thank PG for some of the most recent changes, and blame him for the unintended consequences of his particular version of the reality distortion field.