Founder-first investing

Ron Conway describes how he moved from founding a computer company into full-time angel investing, and why he chose Internet software as a high-growth sector. He teaches investors to evaluate founders for character, determination, and how co-founders work together, while meeting the whole team and learning the company’s culture. He recommends spreading investments across a portfolio, adding value through hiring and introductions, and accepting that many investments will fail. He also urges investors to act with integrity and transparency, support founders’ execution without taking over their companies, and encourage civic engagement.

Paul Buchheit describes how he learned to invest in startups through successes and mistakes. He favors founders who communicate clearly, move quickly, accomplish a lot with little, and pursue ambitious or initially implausible ideas. He advises investors to prioritize founders over their own market expertise, act decisively on promising companies, and avoid investing based only on price, pity, cynical motives, or impressive numbers. He also stresses that seed investing involves luck, so investors should avoid drawing overly broad lessons from individual failures.