alt Hacker News>Best approach would be to make very few investments
Top VCs—who see the best deals and run deep diligence—still only have a 1–5% hit rate. As an angel, you don’t have that level of access or time. Even if you get strong referrals, you’d need to be 10–15x better than elite VCs to pick winners in a small portfolio. Unless you’re investing in at least 10 companies, it’s statistically a losing game.
My experience: I invested in ~200 companies early stage (with some winners like HuggingFace, Checkr & more).
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"...and run deep diligence"
I've not seen that much but what I've seen is "Let's ask a few buddies and google a bit".
The takeaway that I agree with is the parent's and OP's point that you will need to invest in a lot of companies, perhaps 30-50, and you will nee to be in for the long term.
A lot of angel investors are not investing particularly large sums, and a lot of what they're doing is buying someone that's going to use services other people they're connected to are selling.
When you're multiples are 10,000x revenue, a lot of people will shell out $10k to get you onto a few startup services...
That's the investment itself. Not getting paid back.
What's your biggest motivation for doing angel investing?