The new economy moves blindingly quickly, as business ideas move from backs of envelopes to reality in months. Venture capital is the seed corn of this frenetic activity, but it's not just faceless City banks out sowing. Individual investors, or angels, provide a growing slice of initial cash. And they are becoming an increasingly professional breed. Amis and Stevenson spoke to more than 50 to find what makes them tick--and to glean the lessons that will allow the rest of us to make money out of other people's ideas, too.

"We invest in great entrepreneurs, with sound business models that will make money", says Amis, himself a veteran of 15 investments. Of course. But the trick is knowing which to choose from the thousands of hopefuls vying for your investment cash. The writers eliminate as much risk as possible, with seven fundamentals of early-stage investing: sourcing, evaluating, valuing, structuring, negotiating, supporting and harvesting. Each is set out in fine detail, and at each stage you rigorously research and examine your project--deciding whether to proceed or fold each time. No one is pretending this is risk-free. "If you are the best going, you'll hit it out of the park 10-15% of the time. That's one of the scariest things about angel investing", admits one angel.

Still interested? Then you will need plenty of money. Amis and Stevenson reckon $25,000 for a worthwhile single investment... and they don't believe in single investments. "Early-stage investing is like drilling for oil ... you can't just do one", one angel advises.

Winning Angels is a superbly organised and invaluable handbook to start-up investing. You will examine the shape of a typical deal, from chance contact at a networking group to flotation on the stock market. And all the time, you will be told to ask questions. What does my intuition tell me? Do I have experience in this area? Is there a clear product and revenue possibility? And you will learn about leaving people wanting to deal with you in the future. Very wise--that next one could be the real thing. --John Rennie

2003-01-06 Not a Winning Book

This book has some useful content, but the way it is presented just makes me squirm.

The format is almost like that of a series of powerpoint slides with lots of bullet points, short paragraphs, pull quotes, etc.
But that simply makes it unreadable.

Would have been better turned into literate sentances and flowing paragraphs. But if you can stick the language, the underlying facts and experience they refer to are sound.