Anyone know of any good websites to invest in small companies that need some seed money to get started. Not these angel investor huge valuations but real small companies who want to sell off some equity at a fair price. I keep running into these sites where is no real background checks. Would even look at college students just starting out as well.

You want to participate in a fund or actually be the angel. You get a better bang for buck the earlier you join the process, but obviously the value of the company (and the risk) is different then too.

Angel's List is a great site but maybe that isn't what you want?

What about some of the crowd funding sites?

Tim Ferris has a lot to say on this subject and is one of the fund leaders on Angel's List.

I think you could get in contact with any of a number of business incubators, startup accelerators, etc. and meet tons of potential businesses to invest in.

Going to look around and see what I can find. Going to try to get into a few different companies. Most crowd funding companies I saw were not really giving equity which I clearly would want

Not sure I understand what you're trying to accomplish but I think you should read this:
http://observer.com/2015/08/why-i-st...d-never-start/

The tl;dr is that successful angel investing is about power laws, looking around on crowd funding sites makes me think you're approaching this incorrectly and will just light some money on fire. I can tell you from personal experience in building for startups, good and great ideas with good teams don't have trouble finding money right now, so you either have to be focused on finding ideas that are actually great but look bad or by getting connected to the big ideas and adding a huge amount of value.

YCombinator has some great explanations on how/why around structuring investments in early stage companies. Convertible notes and such things that I'm not current on.

Will take a look

I took a quick look and I think finding a good site where smaller companies doing some business maybe even internet companies are looking for start-up funding would be good. I do see a couple sites but most are 95% spam.

the internet is pretty much a toilet for this.

Is what you want to do more like giving some money to a local printshop (stable businesses) or investing in startups (with highly speculative outcomes)?

Something in between but more towards highly speculative but not 10 million valuation start-up companies

So... angel investing? We're talking about $1m-$3m valuations ($1.7m valuation taking 7% is the standard YC valuation). Which has the benefit of their ecosystem. As the link I shared mentioned, good angel investors work for their startups and bring immense value from their network.

Why would a good looking startup/team want to sell you equity? What are you going to bring to the table? How are you going to get access? You're finding ****ty founders/startups on these websites because there's a shortage of good founders not a shortage of money.

Yea this.

The best way to do this is through having a network, and getting introductions to the right people.

Have you considered just picking up the phone and calling VCs that do early stage funding and telling them you are interested in being an angel investor, or calling some popular schools and trying to find the right contacts to explain what you want to do.

I know this is something that the major startup schools are actively considering all the time.

YC invests in the company at that price, not the angels. The typical valuation out of YC is something like 6-10 million pre-money, with the hottest companies going for more.

The rest is dead on though.

pm'd. I'm actually looking for exactly someone like you...very small seed.

Looking for something with existing revenue and at least breakevenish preferably with some small initial roi

While we are at it, I'd like a toilet seat made of solid gold...

Circle Up?

You're dillusional.... Why would they give up equity doing business with you when they have all the requirements to just get a loan... what you're looking for requires personal relationships with small buisnesses in the area so unless you're heavily involved in the community it would be impossible but your expectations are impossible anyways.

maybe to normalize or improve working capital?

The problem with start ups is that you buy stock from very motivated people who know their business well and who do not want to sell cheap. On the stock market you can buy from day trading clueless housewives.

Seems you need to know people and really get involved to make decent returns with this. Or you need to be lucky that they need capital badly. Or that they are financially clueless and somehow still competent enough to do well.

That is what the loan would be for. VC money or any sort of private fundraising event (from professionals) that is similar is going to be the most expensive way to get money.

Last sentence is accurate. Stuff before... not so much.

thank you sir.

I am in touch with a lot of startups, many seeking funding, in the San Diego area. If you're interested in taking on some risky investments that could actually pay off, hit me up. Don't PM me though, I never check my 2p2 PMs, hit me up on Twitter: @SixPeppers

Thank you for this, great read that explains a lot.

I will say that in terms of motivation, I can definitely see the attraction in dabbling in this. Not necessarily because it maxes +ev, but because I think it would be fun, and would allow you to 'live the dream' in the same way buying a lottery ticket does (obviously this is a terrible thing to post in this forum).

I was talking with my friend Clayton about this just the other day. It's like playing the World Series Main Event. Basically you put $10k (maybe $100k) in and expect to never see it again. But you know you made a +EV investment, and if it happens to come back, you will be rich and famous. :-D