What this is

No new concepts. This combines Lessons 13-23 into one portfolio-level decision, the kind a solo angel makes not about a single deal, but about how a full year of investing capital should actually be allocated.

Your situation

  • Total annual angel-investing budget: $150,000, capital you can genuinely afford to lock up for a decade
  • You've sourced 40 deals this year that passed a first-look screen (Lesson 11)
  • Of those, 12 survived deeper diligence (Lesson 13) as genuinely worth investing in
  • You're deciding: how many of the 12 to fund, at what check size, and how much to hold back for follow-ons

Annual budget

$150,000

Deals passing diligence

12

If 12 checks, no reserve

$12,500 each

If 10 checks, 30% reserve

$10,500 each

The question

How would you allocate the $150,000 across these 12 opportunities? Work through it before reading on.

A reasonable read: fund 9-10 of the 12 at roughly $10,000-$11,500 each, holding back around 30% ($45,000) as a follow-on reserve (Lesson 21), rather than spreading thin across all 12 with nothing held back. Cutting to 9-10 lets you skip the two or three weakest of the twelve, diligence is imperfect and ranking matters even among deals that already passed a real bar. Holding a reserve means that if one or two of these clearly separate from the pack at their next round, you have capital ready to exercise pro rata (Lesson 9) without needing to find new capital under time pressure. Funding all 12 with no reserve optimizes for breadth today at the cost of your ability to double down on tomorrow's winners.

Try this yourself

Change one input at a time and see whether your allocation changes:

  • Your budget is $50,000 instead of $150,000, does the same 9-10 position target still make sense, or does check size or position count need to give first?
  • Only 4 of the 40 deals passed deep diligence instead of 12, does a smaller reserve ratio make more sense given fewer likely follow-on candidates?
  • Two of the 12 are follow-on opportunities in existing positions from a prior year, not new companies, does that change how you'd split the reserve?

If you can talk through why each of these would change your answer, you're ready for the Advanced tier, starting at Lesson 25.