Brad Feld

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Is It Angel Investing or For-Profit Philanthropy?

Oct 23, 2006
Category Investments

On Friday, I did a podcast with David Cohen and Kimbal Musk on angel investing.  David and I have done a few angel investments together (Solidware Technologies and ClickCaster), I’ve got a long history of angel investing (over 50 since 1994), and I’m an investor in Kimbal’s new company Me.dium (part of my “dynamics of information” theme.)  Plus – we did the podcast at The Kitchen – my favorite restaurant in Boulder – which happens to be owned by Kimbal and was previously the location of some of my “for-profit philanthropy” in the form of a previously failed restaurant called Triana (once hot – now not.)  So – there was plenty of “angel karma” in the room as we talked.

David’s show notes do a good job of summarizing the podcast, as does Scott Converse’s post Is Angel Investing good? (Scott is the CEO of ClickCaster.)  My favorite line is that some angel investment is like “for-profit philanthropy.”  Fortunately – a number of the angel investments that I’ve done – including several with my good friend Will Herman – have been successful – making all the for-profit philanthropy ones nice tax writeoffs.

If you are an entrepreneur looking to raise angel money, or an angel investor, or someone considering being an angel investor, I recommend a listen to the podcast.