An angel investor at Golden Seeds describes how the pandemic shaped his personal bets: one in a COVID-resistant sector, another in testing companies. The firm checked in on its 70 portfolio companies, formed task teams to help with pivots, and kept investing. Angel investors do more than write checks, he says. They guide founders through crises.
How has COVID-19 affected either your personal angel investing outlook or maybe Golden Seeds' investment outlook and processes?
Yeah, sure. So I'll answer it from both sides. So from my personal outlook, I actually did make two investments recently also, and one of them was in an industry that absolutely is not going to be affected by the coronavirus, and the other industry that is going to benefit but from helping people with getting access to tests. So it is, you know, I'm directly investing in a company that, that valuation is going to improve based on the product that they're providing. As far as Golden Seeds, and this is why I really like being part of this group, is we, we have about 70 portfolio companies and we jumped right in to assess their needs first. And we've created different task teams and, you know, now we have all of our companies kind of on the board and we're looking at what exactly they need from us to either continue or, you know, maybe get some advising or guidance of how to pivot or whatever else they need to do. And I think that's a very important point about angel investing, that it's— you're not just writing a check, you're really holding the hand of the founders and the companies to through the good times and the hard times, and you are really trying to help them. So we are open for investing, and we may be doing some follow-ons on our previous portfolio companies, but we're still holding office hours and screenings for new companies to come in.
That's really great to know.
