Learning Blog > Startup Financial Planning
April 9, 2025
The long-term, all-participant angel investment failure rate is too high. While technically an opinion, the evidence has become overwhelming. The only ones who would attempt to argue with it are those whose goals did not really require or expect significant ROI. For them, my opinion extends to say they can call themselves anything they wish, but not angel investors. I reserve that label for us who know what this really is.
The first and primary reason this asset class has failed to perform consistently, such that our investor churn rate remains high, is that those who lead it have not ubiquitously, resolutely, together deployed their own capital and taught others to by distinguishing between a venture capital-backable startup and a lifestyle startup.
A VC-backable startup possesses ALL of the following (no exceptions):
- A solution so innovatively new that it can gain legal IP protection, and/or so outrageously difficult to duplicate or match the results of, that a would-be competitor would rather claw their own eyes out than try. (Short label: MOAT)
Click the button below to get the “rest of the story” by Desert Angels Board Chairman, Jeff Koenig