Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups

Foreword

A LITTLE MORE than a decade ago, in the Fall of 2002, the company I worked for, PayPal, had just been acquired by eBay. In the wake of this deal, I was considering a long vacation. PayPal had been successful, but countless dot-coms had recently failed; many people felt that the consumer Internet boom was over.

But I began sensing opportunity. The entire online ecosystem was evolving. The Internet was becoming ubiquitous, increasingly integrated into everyday life. And real identity was beginning to play a more prominent role in the online world.

As real identity became a more important aspect of the Internet, so too did the connections between people. In the early days of the web, content was primary. But as we started shifting from the Information Age into a new era—the Network Age—relationships were taking precedence. Information was still critical, but people were starting to rely more and more on other people to make sense of the vast amounts of content available to them. Networks were starting to frame everything.

Once I began to fully see the import of this shift, I decided to lean all the way into Web 2.0 and the beginnings of the Network Age. To capitalize on how the Network Age would transform the world of work, I founded LinkedIn. But I didn't focus my attentions on only the professional side. I also became an angel investor to invest in the social aspects of the Network Age, backing such companies as Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Ning, Six Apart, and Zynga. ...