If you don’t have a head start, you have to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. With all the information of the world available on your mobile phone, there is no shortage of opportunities for anyone that wants to start their own journey.
In this article, I will share my journey about how I, a member of the generation Z, hacked my way into becoming an angel investor.
Growing up on YouTube
YouTube has been a big player in my development and that of my generation. From learning how to play games to programming and financial education, YouTube has been the place where I could find all the information that I was looking for.
Around the high school period, I’ve also stumbled upon the financial education side of YouTube. That’s where I’ve started to learn everything there was to know about saving money, credit, financial independence and eventually investing in different asset types.
This was the first opportunity that I’ve taken advantage of. Learning everything there was to know about optimizing my financial situation gave me a huge head start later on when I actually started earning money that I could use.
Side gigs, the first job and crowdlending
During the first stages of my professional career, I’ve been taking on quite a few side gigs. Working over the summer as a bartender, as a personal driver or even saving money from winning a few competitions as a professional athlete are just a few examples.
All the money that I’ve managed to gather during this period I’ve put into the stock market as it was the most common way to invest discussed among the content that I was watching.
In 2018, as I’ve just been accepted into university, I’ve also got my first job in IT as an automation developer at a startup and I was finally earning some money to dabble more into investing.
My income was and still is split into 3 buckets:
- sustaining myself – 20%
- personal development – 30%
- investing – 50%
During this period I’ve also learned about the idea of crowdlending. I found out about Crowdestate, which at that time looked like the best platform for crowdlending in Europe. I’ve joined as a member and I’ve started to diversify into this type of asset as well.
Lack of ideas and crowdinvesting
After some more time, both my income and my investment portfolio grew quite a bit. Simultaneously, one of the content creators that I was watching discussed how he became an angel investor into a startup that was related to his niche.
From a young age, I was interested in starting my own company and building amazing products but at that time I thought that I had to wait for the perfect idea to come to me. The topic of angel investing caught my interest very easily as it seemed like the perfect opportunity to break into entrepreneurship even without having a good idea of my own.
That was my first interaction with the idea of investing into the private sector which eventually led me to crowdinvesting at the beginning of 2020 and finding out about SeedBlink, while researching platforms where I could invest into startups. I’ve joined the platform to learn more about the startup ecosystem and entrepreneurship.
The first angel investment and the start of the pandemic
Not even 2 months after joining the crowdfunding platform, a campaign that I really thought had potential was published and with the money that I had saved up, I have joined the round. After learning about the process, the following investment came very quickly as I was excited to learn everything about this domain.
Shortly after, the Covid pandemic also came to Romania and I doubled down on my learning. I’ve started to explore other parts of the startup ecosystem as well and I’ve even joined local angel investment groups from Romania to build a bigger network of information.
Due to the situation with the pandemic, the stock market took a hit. Among my portfolio, I had the luck of investing into some companies that became very valuable during the pandemic (ex. Nvidia) but not knowing how the economic situation would continue to unfold, I sold all the investments where I made a profit.
Around the same time, people that previously invested on Crowdestate were scared about the events and wanted to liquidate their investments even at a loss through the secondary market of the platform. I decided to risk all the gains that I got through the stock market by buying the sold loans at a ~50% discount. When the panic was over and the markets returned to normal, it resulted in a over 60% profit in less than a year.
All the money from this risky adventure was funneled back into investing in more startup rounds. At this point, I’ve also started to develop a more comprehensible investment thesis focused on finding companies/products that are building a product for the future, not just for the moment.
A first exit and freelancing
Not even 1 year after my first investment, we had a new opportunity to sell some of our shares at a 3x valuation in a follow up round and I decided to liquidate half of my investment and diversify my portfolio further.
After working for some time at multiple companies, I’ve decided to go on my own as a freelancer and open my company Venture Chain. The idea for this was that most of the income that I was going to make from working I would reinvest into startups.
Investing using loans and the secondary market
It’s a well known fact that you can grow your wealth faster by using leverage. I wanted to try this out. When I had a contract in place with a client that was to be paid at a later date, I decided to use it to my advantage and take a bank loan (which was later on paid off) that I could use to invest and grow my portfolio faster.
With the launch of the SeedBlink secondary market I also got some other opportunities to liquidate some investments that I no longer believed in. I sold my shares at a1.5x – 2x multiple.
Those two aspects accelerated my portfolio growth and together with putting more of my freelancing income towards startups, I’ve managed to invest into 30 rounds at the age of 25 in less than 3 years of angel investing.
Lessons learned
- Take advantage of opportunities
- Walk the unbeaten path
- Learn everything you can and turn your knowledge into your unique advantage
- Take risks that are balanced in your favor
The future
Angel investing will always be a part of my investment strategy, even if lately focused on investing into more mature, but private, companies.
The way I analyze companies has also shifted. I now search for companies that are building assets (a strategy inspired by private equity).
I’ve recently joined a new angel investor group specialized in the creator economy. I believe that in a world where everyone is focused on AI, crypto and trends, you need to find the hidden gems. The creator economy is the hidden gem that I believe in and I’m betting on it with my investment and also the products that I’m launching.
I hope that more people from my generation can get inspired to start angel investing and I’m actively working towards inspiring my friends to join me on this journey.
