Angel Investing Playbook....That’s Absurd!

I say ‘that’s absurd’ a lot when I talk about the stock market.

The stock market is an absurd, mystical, living, breathing monster that feeds on our energy.

As absurd as the market can be, so to is the life of an entrepreneur and investor.

The best ‘TELL’ I know for angel investing is to double down when I utter ‘that’s absurd‘!

My biggest mistakes of the last few years are from private investments that I shunned for ‘ABSURD’ valuations. The only thing that has been absurd is the returns I have left on the table.

I have made two MONDO mistakes the last few years and none of them are stock market related. All of them were teed up.

1. Fred Wilson offered me an early stage investment in Twitter and I asked “what price?”. When I heard the price I responded…’Are You Absurd’!? Let’s also just say that at the time, I wrote a post that Twitter was for Twits . Today they closed on $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. At least I have the $TWIT stream…

Oy.

2. When Mark Pinkus was was creating Zynga and pitching me the early iteration, I told him I was in and good for a piece. By the time the official round got going, Fred Wilson called and offered me a piece and I asked “what price?”. When I heard the price I responded…’Are You Absurd!?’ . Today….OY. I heard that Farmville ( a new Zynga game ) had 15 MILLION players the other day. At least I never wrote a post ‘Is Zynga for ZITS’…so that’s a consolation.

The lesson…

I am a putz.

PS – I was lucky/smart enough to invest in Betaworks which started Summize which was purchased by Twitter…so booyah!

PSS – The genius that took my Twitter investment…Jeff Pulver . He’s a gentleman and always lets me in free to his twitter conferences. Really.