I enjoyed yesterday’s Angel University 4-hour angel investing training, with great insights from Jason Calcanis, Mike Savino, and Monique Woodard. The entire cost goes to charities, and it was a great, Zoom-based 101-level introduction into angel investing best practices. There were some great discussions about questions to ask, how to design your angel portfolio (number of investments, sizes of investments), and how to build your personal brand as an angel investor.

There was so much great information — a few items that stood out to me:

• Ask short questions that request short, specific, tangible answers, such as Who is your ideal customer?; What’s your business model in 1-2 sentences?
• Using Loom for a founder to embed a short 2-5 minute video into some presentation slides for an introductory pitch, or quick update on existing investment
• Using LeadIQ to find an email address for someone you want to connect with
• It’s not uncommon for companies to make a mistake in their cap table, as they move through investing rounds