Thread by @patio11

Agree so much. Interesting knock-on effects, too:

1) Companies which previously had a $25k minimum to account for legal friction/founder headaches should be happy to take $1k from e.g. an engineer.

2) It's SO MUCH better for "not my day job" angel investors to centralize info.

https://twitter.com/dwr/status/1456660709861777415

e.g. I owe the National Tax Agency (Japanese IRS) some math every year about all of my overseas assets, including those which did nothing in a year, and the process of collecting that information looks something like this:

Non-AngelList investment from 2012: get docs out of Dropbox, grep inbox to see if e.g. this is the one that I remember signing the docs about a corporate transaction this year or not, math math math, en-spreadsheet.

AngelList: download report on all, send to accountant, done.

"Why would a startup want to accept a $1k check from an engineer? That pays for basically nothing."

No no no you don't even care about the money. You care about having an engineer having skin in game, singing your praises to friends, thinking about working for you.

Literally every startup that adopts AngelList RUVs (and thereby trivializes adding users) should take $100k or so of allocation, set it aside, and happily give tiny slices to any (accredited) engineer/etc who wants in.

Think: they pay you for an option on you hiring them later.

If you want one of my twice-annual "say nice things about crypto" moments, btw, the most compelling innovation that community has come up with is distributing the upside for a new venture much more widely than startups which themselves do it more widely than is traditional.

Many problems with how they do it, but they're absolutely right on "Shouldn't you urgently want to have hundreds of savvy people in your corner prior to your new thing attracting savvy people to its banner strictly through product utility."

Yes. You should want that.

"Should engineers want to make that investment?"

Engineers/etc should be much more willing to make that investment than almost any other capital provider, because they are not necessarily making it out of an expectation of direct financial returns.

For example, as someone who intends to be in the industry for the rest of my working career and who is intentionally extremely willing to have dinner with people because you never know, $1k is extremely cheap to say "I'd like to super follow you."

There is no future in which I will regret a talented engineer emailing me and saying "Patrick I lost your trivial amount of money and now find myself needing a job."

An email announcing the IPO instead? *Merely bonus points.*

"Doesn't that plausibly dilute the branding/signaling value of an investment?"

To misquote Jeff Bezos, your capital/branding discipline is my opportunity. ;)