📈 How much do you make #6

Making $167k in fintech + syndicating $10m in angel investments

April 03, 2023

  • This week we spoke with Greyson (pseudonym), a 25-year-old Head of Growth at an early-stage fintech startup.

  • He lives in New York City🗽

  • Makes ~167k per year💸

  • Co-leads an angel syndicate 😇 that has invested over $10M into 30+ startups

What do you do professionally and how much do you make?

I lead growth at a seed-stage fintech startup. On the side, I do a bit of freelancing for other startups.

All-in, my current total comp works out to about $167,000, including consulting projects.

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Income growth

My salary has gone up a lot since my first post-college job in 2019. The biggest earnings improvements have always come from getting a new job or being promoted internally.

Can you walk us through your monthly expenses?

I live on a little over $4k per month and save / invest the remaining ~5k per month after taxes. My burn is low by NYC standards. I’ve been able to save money by renting with roommates, eating out less, not drinking, and living in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan.

Savings Approach

I invest just enough of my salary into my 401k to get the 100% match that my company offers. 401k matches are basically free money. The company is giving you a dollar for every dollar you invest into that retirement account. You don’t want to leave that on the table.

I also max out my IRA donations every year. In 2022, the max IRA contribution was $6,000 so I put $500 per month into a self-directed IRA that I usually invest in index funds and a few individual stocks.

Everything else goes into cash, crypto, or angel investments.

Asset allocation

Most of my paper net worth is tied up in startup equity via my angel investments and stock options at the startup. Early-stage startups are illiquid, volatile, and often go to zero. There’s a chance all of those assets could end up worth nothing so I don’t take the numbers super seriously.

Angel Investing 😇

You’re well-known in tech circles as an angel investor. Tell us more about how you got started.

I started angel investing a couple years ago. I built a great network in NYC tech, the startup I worked for, and Twitter. A lot of the people I knew ended up starting companies and raising money.

My first investments were in my friend's companies. Typically people I had already worked for or spent a lot of time with. Usually $1-2k per deal.

As I got my feet wet, I started meeting other angel investors and venture capitalists. I’d send those investors deals I was looking at.

Eventually, that became a flywheel because the more investors I knew, the more I could help founders fundraise. The more I could help founders fundraise, the more deals I had to send investors. The more deals I had to send investors, the more other investors wanted to meet me. And the flywheel just keeps going and going from there.

Eventually, I started seeing more deals and getting offered allocations in deals that I couldn’t fill with my capital. So a few friends and I started syndicating deals together on AngelList. As of today, our syndicate has invested a little over $10M into different startups across 20+ companies.

Tell us more about your syndicate? Also, can you explain what an SPV is?

An SPV is basically an investment vehicle that exists solely to make a single investment into a single deal. In my case, we pull funds from our group of investors on AngelList and invest in a startup.

The organizers of the SPV typically get 20% carry on all the profits of the SPV. So if I raise 100k for an SPV investment and that someday turns into a $1M return. I’d get 20% of the profits on the investment. In this example, that would work out to $180,000.

Syndicates are just groups of investors that frequently pool their investments together into different deals. Each investor in the syndicate gets to see the deals the syndicate leads bring in and choose if they are going to invest in those deals. It’s all pretty much deal by deal.

Tell me more about how you approach fundraising for your SPVs. Was it hard to raise capital initially?

Fundraising is never easy, but we already had great investor networks by the time we started syndicating deals.

In addition to that, AngelList has a network of investors on their platform that we were able to fundraise from as well.

Tbh, we got started during one of the greatest bull markets we’ve ever seen in tech. Anyone could have started investing in startups when we did. It’ll be a long time before we know if I’m actually any good at this.

Getting started with angel investing.

It’s gotten a lot easier to invest in startups. Far easier than ever before. You can invest small checks into startups through tools and platforms like Capital (fka Party Round), AngelList, Republic, etc.

With those tools, founders are a lot more willing to take small checks, especially if you have a relationship or they think you can add value somehow.

I would only recommend actively angel investing if you already work in tech. If you’re not in this industry and embedded in the ecosystem, it’s pretty hard to access deal flow and even harder to learn how to pick good deals. If you’re not in the industry, you’re better off finding someone that is and investing through them.

Why angel invest?

I have three main goals for angel investing:

  1. Learning

  2. Building a track record

  3. Achieving Asymmetric Returns

1. Learning

Investing forces me to learn constantly, especially startup investing. I’m constantly learning about new markets, companies, trends, and technology.

For example, I didn’t know anything about senior care, but I got getting interested in that space after reading a few research articles about the wave of retiring baby boomers. Since then, I’ve met dozens of founders and investors in this industry, read hundreds of articles, talked to owners of caregiving agencies and senior care homes, etc.

All of this happened in the span of a couple months.

2. Track Record

Building a track record is one of the hardest things about angel investing. Most startups don’t exit for at least 7-10 years. So there’s this really long gap between when you make an investment and when you find out if you’re any good at picking startups.

Once you have a great track record, being a successful investor gets a lot easier.

Investors with great track records get access to the best deals and are able to raise the most capital from investors. Full Stop.

It kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The best founders want to work with the best investors. Other investors are more likely to send you good deals and invest in your deals or funds. Everything just gets easier.

But again, the challenge is it takes a long time to build a track record. So the sooner I get started, the better.

3. Returns

This should be obvious but I’m not just investing for fun. The goal is to generate great returns for myself and anyone that invests with me.

Book Rec

Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. Completely changed how I think about money.

Podcast Recs

  • My First Million – great for getting and thinking about startup ideas.

  • Invest Like the Best – deep dives on investors, markets, and companies

  • Group Chat – commentary on the latest news in finance, tech, and culture from three entrepreneurs

Blog Recs

Favorite Essays

Financial Goals💰

I want to create generational wealth. I grew up relatively poor by American standards. It sucked.

I want to make sure I and those I care about never go back there.

My net worth goal is $100M. That’s my number.

After that, I’ll just play the game for fun.

My plan to get there is by getting equity in high-leverage businesses. In tech, the best way to do that is by joining high-growth startups early, starting your own company, or investing in other companies. I’m doing a lot of that last one and in the future, I plan to start my own company.

Financial Stack

  • SoFi for banking, savings, credit card, brokerage, and self-directed IRA

  • Coinbase for buying, trading, and sometimes storing crypto (I know, I know. I should have it all in a wallet)

  • Metamask as my browser-based wallet for storing and moving crypto

  • Ledger for my crypto hardware wallet. I try to keep the majority of my crypto here.

  • Charles Schwab for a small portfolio of public equities. I also occasionally trade stock options here too.

  • Apple Card because it looks dope

  • X1 because it looks dope and has good rewards

  • Bilt for credit card points on my rent

  • Bank of America accounts so I have one bank with a physical branch presence in case I need it

  • Mint to manage my budget and track my credit score

  • Google sheets for personal financial modeling

  • Cash App & Venmo for p2p payments

  • Human Interest for a 401k from a startup I used to work at

  • Alto IRA for my alternative asset investment IRA

  • Koyfin for stock and public markets data and research

  • Messari for crypto data and research

  • AngelList to manage my SPV investments

  • Steady Capital for real estate investments

Lessons Learned

1. Do your own research and build your own conviction on your investments.

I lost a bunch of money in crypto because I followed fomo and didn’t develop my own conviction.

With angel investing, I’ve made investments I regret just because a tier 1 VC was leading the round. In retrospect, my worst-performing deals are the ones where I outsourced my conviction to someone else.

2. Play your own game. 

You have to understand what your edge is. What you’re well positioned to do and what you’re not well positioned to do.

I’m way better at thinking long-term about industries and companies. That’s why startup investing suits me. Your investment is illiquid. You couldn’t sell if you wanted to.