{"id":293,"date":"2010-09-22T09:16:20","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/?p=293"},"modified":"2010-09-22T09:16:20","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T13:16:20","slug":"angelgate-symptom-or-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/angelgate-symptom-or-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"AngelGate: Symptom or Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems clear this week’s meme is going to be “AngelGate”, after Michael Arrington crashed a private meeting of West coast “super” angels, accusing them of collusion and price fixing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ignore Arrington’s penchant for drama for a minute, but assume there’s some truth to his allegations. \u00a0 While it’s fun to get worked up<\/a>, it’s\u00a0far more interesting to explore why <\/strong>angels might want to coordinate in those ways.<\/p>\n

The root problem (I think) is the excess of seed capital. \u00a0 There are a TON of angels, venture funds now doing seed-stage rounds, Y-Combinator competitors, Betahouse clones, and new, dedicated seed-stage funds. \u00a0And with capital efficiency, many founders have the additional option of self-funding.<\/p>\n

Seed investors are swimming in an increasingly crowded and competitive pool. It’s going to be really tough to generate meaningful returns: \u00a0seed investors are just on the wrong side of the supply\/demand curve. \u00a0Given this,\u00a0I’m not surprised if there’s some collusion among players (formal or informal).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems clear this week’s meme is going to be “AngelGate”, after Michael Arrington crashed a private meeting of West coast “super” angels, accusing them of collusion and price fixing. Ignore Arrington’s penchant for drama for a minute, but assume … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}