As an Entrepreneur I had to make myself familiar with all the rules and regulations of taking on investment, which also meant understanding the benefits to the Investor. It quickly became clear to me that Angel and Early-stage investing (while highly risky) could be one of the best ways to amass passive income if invested wisely as a part of a larger diversified portfolio. In fact, I had actually been an Angel investor for a friend's business in the past, but at the time I didn't know that this was actually a "thing" and that I could have looked for other such seed investment opportunities to build my own wealth beyond my real estate speculation.
Then earlier this year, I noticed that almost all of the Angel investors at start-up events were men. Given the number of wealthy women these days, this seemed unusually skewed. But when I thought about why this might be, I realized that Angel and private early-stage investing is not something generally taught in college or even business school (which is why I didn't learn it there). It works more like a club in that it typically grows through word of mouth where one person shares an opportunity with a friend and educates them on the process personally or introduces them to an investing group. So it makes sense that this "club" historically available only to men would continue as men are typically friends with other men. But this also means that unless there is an intentional effort made to bring more women into the "club", these significant wealth-building opportunities will likely continue to be more available to men. And so in August of this year I decided to start taking steps to educate women who qualify for Angel investing or will likely be eligible within the next few years, so that they can determine whether this should play a role in their personal financial plans.
Over the course of a few weeks, I found myself scheduling several meetings a week to share this information with successful business women. This was very exciting, but unfortunately, I could not continue to carve out so much time for educational sessions. So I decided to organize the information and communications so that more women could benefit and everyone would have a better chance at getting the same information. This is the beginning of Women Can Be Angels.