Angel Investing in Technology Startups

What do you invest in?

  • co-pilot ideas - AI and machine learning products to accelerate human thinking and building.
  • consumer hardware - I love to help founders learn from my mistakes.
  • SMB ideas - small businesses are important; how can we help them become more efficient and succeed against large companies?
  • climate technology - but NOT financial instruments like carbon credits.

More critical is the founder background I like to work with:

  • founders with some experience at a good engineering product company where they had actual ownership. You don’t have to be technical, but you can’t be ignorant. If you say, “I’ll have a tech person to figure it out,” we’re going to have a bad time.
  • founders making a bet on some future that is uncertain, not just a 10% increase in some workflow. You’re admitting there are multiple paths, and our option will win for some reason.

How much do you invest?

up to $25k

How do you help?

I can be an operational member of your team, but that’s a different conversation. Please message me to discuss this option.

But as an investor, I typically do nothing. And that’s because the founders are building.

Hopefully, when they do want to talk, I will provide advice and mentorship in three ways:

  1. helping founders with the actual beginning of products, doing customer discovery, and figuring out how to map what their users are saying to product development and MVP releases through to their first big launch
  2. helping founders build and manage their leadership teams
  3. helping founders develop their fundraising strategy

I don’t want you to go public. I want you to build a successful, profitable company and avoid additional raises unless it’s strategically advantageous.

If you think we’ll talk every week, then that won’t go well. Sorry, this isn’t because I’m busy but because it probably means you are churning too much, and we won’t get along. Usually, I speak to founders on a monthly or quarterly cadence - their preference.

You sound arrogant - why should I put you on my cap table?

I’m not trying to be arrogant. I respect your time and the team you’re building. And I know myself well enough to understand that I don’t do well in specific conversation patterns.

If I’m lucky enough to work with you, I hope I can be helpful in a few ways. Here is what a few folks have said about my contributions:

Aamir advised me and my team of product managers on our approach to product and provided key insights into opportunities to improve our strategy. - Daniel Williamson, Managing Director, OpenStax

It made a world of difference having him as a teammate in building a product culture and organization from scratch. - Carlos Roqué, Product Management, NGA

His experience and understanding of building a scalable hardware company were invaluable. Above all, he’s awesome to work with - someone with great humility who genuinely cares. - Abhinav Khushraj, Co-Founder & CEO, Petasense