Angel Investing: The Art of Finding & Closing the Right Deals

This audiobook addresses the scarcity of good deals for investors and angel investors for entrepreneurs. This is a seeming contradiction, but isn't in fact. Angels routinely lament the lack of good deals and high valuations placed on those available. Most never pull the trigger on deals so, in fact, they are not really angels as defined by having invested in at least one deal outside of family and friends networks.

Entrepreneurs struggle to find the few angels that actually invest in non-family and friends deals, and properly focus their energies on them. The author gives advice about how to look at a company, the warning signs, how to look at entrepreneurs, and those warning signs.

Angels struggle with the odd-duck nature of entrepreneurs, just as entrepreneurs struggle with dealing with the odd-duck behavior of many repeat angel investors. The author points out that the most productive angel investors tend to be those that ran their own businesses or are self-employed, as even the best doctors are, by and large.

The author also suggests that some high-net-worth angels operate almost at VC investment levels and bring tremendous practical knowledge to entrepreneurs that many VCs don't have. These people can be very helpful at connecting entrepreneurs into a wider circle of investors, as well as often knowing when to take the next step up to the sale of the business or, more rarely, get VC or IPO funding. This audiobook is a companion to Business Plans & Executive Summaries, by the same author.