Monthly Updates Create History

Shaan Puri shares his perspective on angel investing, particularly focusing on how he manages investor relationships and deploys capital. His approach emphasizes the value of documentation and learning through investment activities.

Key Points:

• Investment Documentation Philosophy:

  • Writes monthly updates to investors
  • Uses updates to document investment conviction and reasoning
  • Values documentation for future reference (5 years out)
  • Minimal investor maintenance beyond monthly updates

• Capital Deployment Strategy:

  • Must deploy approximately $1M per quarter
  • Usually deploys within first 2 months of each quarter
  • Increased check sizes from previous 50-100k per quarter
  • Deal flow comes naturally once known as an investor

• Learning Through Investing:

  • Views investing as an alternative to traditional MBA
  • Values the network building aspect
  • Gains business knowledge through skin in the game
  • Initial investment approach: "funding own MBA" with ~$120k

• Genuine Interest Beyond Returns:

  • Actually reads investment memos for learning (followed 50+ AngelList syndicates)
  • Uses investing to explore new industries and technologies
  • Applies learnings to primary business activities
  • Sees investing as "entrepreneurial steam release valve"

• Benefits Beyond Financial Returns:

  • Creates opportunities to meet interesting founders
  • Allows exploration of new spaces while staying focused on main business
  • Provides cross-pollination of ideas between investments and primary business
  • Enables learning without switching focus from main venture