Reasons Why You Should Back Rob's Syndicate:

1) STRONG RECORD OF INVESTING PERFORMANCE

The point of angel investing is to earn strong returns. Therefore, the top criterion for picking a syndicate should be the lead's past performance. Anyone with some cash in the bank can write early checks for startups, so seed funding is plentiful. But thanks to the so-called Series A / Series B "Crunch", it's far more difficult for startups to obtain follow-on funding... much less actually get a successful exit.

The performance of my angel investment portfolio speaks for itself:

• Several very quick successful exits. Fitmob was acquired by Classpass (itself one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet) within two months of my investment. Parklet was acquired within nine months of my investment. Meetup was bought by WeWork a year after I invested - and Pop Up Archive was bought by Apple three years after my investment.
• Strong unrealized gains on a large number of my other positions (Foresight Mental Health, BillionToOne, inDinero, Grubmarket, Pipefy, BitPesa, Ripio, Rinse, SendBird, Zum, Wunder), as verified through formal Series A, B, or other follow-on rounds;
• A large proportion of the other companies in my portfolio are also exhibiting extremely strong revenue growth (Wanderu and Italist, to name a couple).

2) DEEP ANGEL INVESTING EXPERIENCE

I've done over 200 angel deals. And that wasn't spray-and-pray: I reviewed thousands of deals to pick out this core set of ventures that I feel are positioned to do exceptionally well. I've spent years studying and attempting to master every aspect of the craft of angel investing.

3) TOTAL COMMITMENT TO FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY

Determining how a backer's hard-earned money gets invested is one of the most solemn duties a person can undertake - and I treat it as such. I approach all my syndicate investments not only with unimpeachable ethics (that's just table stakes), but also with the full measure of thoughtfulness, professionalism and attentiveness demanded in a fiduciary role.

4) COMPELLING DEALFLOW

Dealflow must be stellar in both quality (world-class startups) and quantity (large and reliable volume of investable deals every year)... otherwise, a syndicate is dead on arrival. I spend practically every waking hour cultivating my existing sources of dealflow and thinking incessantly about how to get more. Besides working conventional dealflow sources (conferences, pitch & demo sessions, tech meetups), I have also been developing sources that are much more unique. I have very close ties with top-tier universities, labs and accelerators across both coasts, which gives me visibility on basic technology and tech commercialization trends in a range of fields. I also perform daily scans of a wide range of online investment platforms (both curated and general platforms), and these have led to some of my top-performing deals.

5) CONVINCING INVESTMENT THESIS

Every syndicate has a different approach to selecting deals. Here are the components of my approach.

I'm a Generalist: I invest more like a generalist than a domain specialist. Although domain-focused investing works for some investors, there are strong reasons why I don't restrict my own investments to a specific domain. Top thinkers in the investment world (Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Chris Dixon and many more) have repeatedly pointed out that the best startup companies initially don't even look like companies! They look like toys, or hobbies. They look like bad ideas. Often it's not clear what industry you'd even classify them into; many of the most disruptive ventures exist at the intersection of various industries. (Is Uber just a limo company? Or is it a taxi company? Transportation company? Ridesharing company? Delivery and logistics company? On-demand employment company?). The better approach is to set industry assumptions aside, and simply start from first principles with each company: assess what it does now, what value it provides, whom it serves, and whom it COULD serve. The very best startups create new markets, or even completely new industries.

I Look for Deep Disruption: I invest primarily in companies with traction signals indicating that a deep-disruptor technology is at play. The rise of companies with billions of users has certainly borne out Marc Andreessen's observation that "software is eating the world". However, I believe that many angels, VCs, journalists etc. fail to appreciate that technological development isn't merely unfolding; it's ACCELERATING. The time it takes startups to reach hundreds of millions of users, and/or billion-dollar valuations, has dropped from a decade to a half-decade to its current level of around twenty months. No industry will be immune to the onslaught of digitization. My approach is to find companies that are taking unsexy, tech-lagging industries and dragging them into the modern era.

I Love Traction: The key phrase from the Disruption paragraph above is "traction signals". My interest is rarely piqued by startups that describe the disruption they "might" create; I'd rather go after the startups that are ALREADY disrupting. The two hallmarks of disruptive traction are a 10x improvement on status quo solutions (i.e. not just an incremental improvement); and an exponential growth curve (ideally in revenue, but could also be in users, impressions, etc.). There are plenty of other angels who like to invest at the pre-traction stage. But I've looked at the valuation patterns in today's venture investing market, and I'm convinced that an investment opportunity with strong early traction for, say, a $6M valuation is a vastly better proposition than a deal that's pre-traction (and therefore has unknown prospects) for, say, a $3M valuation. It's worth paying a premium for a company's equity, in exchange for concrete evidence that the market loves what that company is selling.

I Invest in What I Understand: Warren Buffett was right; investing in business models that one doesn't really understand is asking for trouble. You won't catch me putting the syndicate's money into yet another startup claiming to "leverage proprietary algorithms to deliver deep Big Data insights that drive better ad spend targeting and customer engagement". It may be a great company - but if I can't wrap my mind around how they're actually doing it, it's not for me. Conversely, I've had great success to date investing in startups with surprisingly simple business models - often with brick-and-mortar, hardware, or other "real-world" dimensions to their business.

6) HUSTLE AND WORK ETHIC

Hustle and hard work are what have gotten me this far in life - as a student, as an employee, and as an individual investor. I bring that same hustle to the role of syndicate lead. Hustle is how I obtain and retain my backers. It's also how I've unearthed my very best deals to date.

7) SERVICE MINDSET

Without backers, I simply wouldn't have the enormous privilege of operating an investment syndicate. I am therefore grateful to my backers, and strive to demonstrate that gratitude daily, in all aspects of the syndicate process: onboarding backers, selecting and closing deals, and executing ongoing operations. Quite simply, I'm here to serve.

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If you've read this far - kudos for being a disciplined reader! :-)

This is an incredible time to be an angel investor. The great companies of the next decade are ascending right in front of us - and platforms like AngelList enable us to participate in that ascendancy. I hope you'll join my syndicate, so that we can take this journey together.

I syndicate every direct-investment deal where:

A) I can obtain at least a modest-sized allocation; and

B) my level of confidence in the reasonable likelihood of an outsized ROI justifies the fiduciary decision to commit backers' money.