On Deck Angels
The On Deck Angel Fellowship (ODA) is a 8-week program inspired by the success of the On Deck Fellowship.
Just like starting a company, getting started as an angel investor is fraught with risk and uncertainty. How much capital should I be allocating? What is the right valuation? Do those terms make sense? How should I think about this industry, or that team’s experience?
ODA will help accelerate groups of 100 founders and experienced operators along the path to becoming successful angel investors, helping them build a co-investor network, hone their skills, and broaden their knowledge of trends and markets.
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Participants in the first cohort?
Morgan Beller
Nick Caldwell
Austen Allred
Aicha Evans
Phin Barnes
Brad Delson
Jules Walter
Afton Vechery
Deon Nicholas
Li Jin
Lindsay Holden
Dare Olonoh
Sriram Krishnan
Jesse Genet
JD Ross
Elizabeth Weil
Julia DeWahl
Ryan Hudson
Dan Romero
Shivani Siroya
Jonathan Swanson
Soona Amhaz
Justin Kan
Santiago Suarez
Aadil Mamujee
Celine Halioua
Harry Stebbings
Sheel Mohnot
Neil Parikh
Josh Elman
Megan O'Connor
Justin Waldron
The Program
Unique Access
- Fireside chats and small group breakouts with the world's best early-stage investors.
- Exclusive dealflow, with the opportunity to participate in elements of the On Deck Founder Fellowship as an investor, attend pitch days, and join “community events.”
- Access to the On Deck Directory to search and discover other investors, and request introductions to founders.
Community
- Vetted community of exceptional founders and operators who are passionate about early-stage investing.
- Community hosted deep-dive sessions focused on evaluating deals, trends and markets.
- Organized remote social events and icebreakers to facilitate knowledge sharing and relationship building.
Apply for the On Deck Angel Fellowship
Application deadline: October 2nd | Cohort start: October 18th.
Cohort Price: $5,000
Early-bird pricing for the inaugural cohort
Want to learn more? Check our announcement post
Access to the On Deck Fellowship
Our On Deck Founder Fellowship (ODF) program has had some strong early outcomes...
The first ODF cohort kicked off in June, 2019
Over 250 companies incorporated across first 4 cohorts
Over $150M raised in Pre-Seed/Seed funding during ODF
But helping create more founders is just part of the startup equation.
We’re launching the On Deck Angel Fellowship to turn world-class operators into the next great investors.
Want to learn more about ODF? 👉Read the ODF5 Announcement Post
What to Expect
Learn the nuances of how to evaluate products, markets, and teams, and how to prioritize the different components. Master the ability to evaluate companies just by looking at their decks. Understand benchmarks for pre-seed/seed valuations across sectors.
Live founder pitches to the investors, followed by small breakout discussions and mingling opportunities. Interested in a deal? We'll connect you to the founder.
Drill into what key metric is the greatest indicator of Product Market-Fit for both consumer and enterprise companies, and which early-stage traction metrics are the lead indicators of success.
Fireside chats with the world's best early-stage investors, including Reid Hoffman, Mike Maples, Sarah Tavel, Keith Rabois, Elad Gil, Anne Dwane, Charles Hudson, and more.
We’ll invite founders, investors, and fellows to run deep dive discussions into trends and opportunities across a number of industries (i.e. fintech, edtech, marketplaces, consumer social, healthcare, enterprise, future of work, etc)
Learn what syndicate leads look for in a deal to bring to their syndicates, what you should look out for, and how to start your own.
In partnership with
We are excited to be partnering with Village Global to co-deliver the Angel Fellowship programming. They will also be sponsoring 30 slots.
Village Global, the early stage VC firm backed by some of the world’s most successful founders, entrusts capital to angel investors so those angels can back the remarkable startups they choose. On Deck Angel Fellows can apply for this program.
Testimonials
Apply for the On Deck Angel Fellowship
Application deadline: October 2nd | Cohort start: October 18th.
Cohort Price: $5,000
Early-bird pricing for the inaugural cohort
Want to learn more? Check our announcement post
On Deck is on a mission to 10x the number of founders building world changing companies.
To accomplish this goal, we also want to help increase the number of experienced operators-turned-investors backing these founders and companies.
When startups raise capital, who they choose to raise from can have a critical impact on their trajectory.
World-class founders love raising from other established founders and experienced operators who have been there before, can provide relevant advice, and open up their networks to find new customers, potential hires, and more.
But just like starting a company, getting started as an angel investor is fraught with risk and uncertainty.
- “How much capital should I allocate?”
- “What is the right valuation, and do the terms make sense?”
- "How do I evaluate opportunities in this industry, or find experts to help me evaluate?"
- “How should I reference this founder, or understand if this team’s experience fits the problem they’re trying to solve?”
- “How much do I weigh traction against other positive signals?”
The goal of ODA is to build an amazing community and peer learning environment around cohorts of established founders and experienced operators; helping them accelerate their journeys to becoming world-class angel investors.
Joining the On Deck Angel Fellowship is $5,000
For this first inaugural cohort, we’re offering the program at an early-bird rate of $5,000, with the cost rising for subsequent cohorts.
This program fee covers:
1) Your admission to an 8-week program & curriculum, including hundreds of hours of live programming, breakout sessions and masterclasses across the On Deck Angel and Founder Fellowships.
2) Access to the online community and On Deck Directory (sneak peek here). You’ll have visibility into the various projects and ideas fellows are working on, opportunity to engage in online forums, and host discussion groups/workshops with our founders.
3) The opportunity to participate in official On Deck investor programming, including office hours, our “first look” investor program, founder pitch days, and to request introductions directly to 1,000+ ODF founders at the most formative stages of company building.
4) And ultimately: the life-changing opportunity to build relationships with a group of high potential co-investors, talented founders and operators: a network and talent “asset” that will follow you deep into your investing career.
Our goal is to make the Angel Fellowship accessible to high potential investors, regardless of their personal situation.
While you’ll need to have had some degree of financial success to meet the “accredited investor” threshold (see below) and be in a position to deploy capital at all — we realize that many angel investors are still very early in their journeys, and that $5,000 is a non-trivial commitment.
We are excited to have a number of fully sponsored places available thanks to the generosity of founding members and partners.
There are no fees to apply, so please submit an application to be considered for the fellowship — you’ll have the option to request financial assistance if you receive an offer to join ODA1.
To join ODA, you are probably:
- A current or past founder of a technology company with deep knowledge of your market;
- A technology executive or otherwise experienced “operator” with experience building/scaling startups, and/or leading teams at notable tech companies, looking to pay it forward and share your experience.
- Someone with a unique background or lived experience, knowledge of an industry or technology that gives you access to and/or ability to help founders working on problems you are familiar with.
- Passionate about learning the craft of angel investing and helping founders succeed.
We regularly describe the On Deck Fellowship as a “buffet”, and ODA is no different.
Both programs are very much a “you get out what you put in” community: often the biggest contributors are also the biggest beneficiaries.
Depending on your schedule and interests, you could choose to:
- attend everything and “gorge” yourself on knowledge until you explode;
- tune in at your leisure to attend sessions that interest you; or
- just search the directory and connect with interesting people 1:1.
There’s no pressure to invest in any companies or founders you meet: you can invest at your own pace and remain focused on your company. Most participants invest in companies they’re already helping.
Yes, the On Deck Angel Fellowship is for accredited investors only.
We want the ODA community to be a safe space to share information about active fundraises, deals you’re seeing and considering participating in. Unfortunately, this means we have to restrict access to accredited investors only.
Accredited investors are individuals or entities that meet standards defined by U.S. securities regulators which allow them to invest in certain private securities offerings. Most startups raising money do so from accredited investors only.
You should read the full definition here, but in brief this includes:
1) Individuals with annual income over $200K individually (or $300K with spouse) in each of the last 2 years and an expectation of the same this year.
2) Individuals with net assets over $1 million, excluding their primary residence (priced common stock or vested shares in a startup can count).
3) An institution with over $5 million in assets, such as a venture fund or a trust.
4) An entity made up entirely of accredited investors.
While this regulation itself is problematic for a number of reasons, the consequences of not playing by SEC rules are high and mostly fall on founders, so we have to be strict here.
Yes: just like ODF, the On Deck Angel Fellowship will be run entirely virtually/remotely. This enables participation from all corners of the world. We’ve spent the past two ODF cohorts mastering the playbook for building remote communities and relationship building online, and will apply the same approach here.
Our community is strong in several hubs around the world mostly notably in the San Francisco Bay Area. As soon as the coast is clear post-COVID, we’ll be back to organizing frequent offline programming including dinners/small gatherings and retreat.
No, we expect that most participants will be founders and operators who plan to continue operating and building companies as their “day job” while scaling up their investing on the side.
We see entrepreneurship as a career that goes from founding and building startups to investing in them. You’ll learn how to be a better operator from the other investor/operators in your program. You may start one or two companies over your career—but you can invest for a lifetime.
Yes! Many ODF Fellows are excited founders and experienced operators who are investing in addition to building their own companies. We’d love to have you involved in both.
On Deck lives by four core guiding values, crucial to the culture we strive to foster in the community:
- Service: On Deck is bigger than any one person. For this community to thrive, it must be driven by a spirit of service to others. Be generous with your time, knowledge, and support. Karma has a way of finding its way back.
- Sacredness: By default, everything is off the record. Many in this group are searching for something deeper in their lives or making big transitions, and others may not yet have publicly shared this with friends, family, or employers. Please honor that, and avoid sharing anything you learn about each other without explicit permission.
- Respect: You are all now part of the On Deck family. You’re all embarking on what will surely be a rollercoaster of a journey — but you’re in this shared experience together. With that comes a sense of responsibility: be inclusive, stick together, and respect one another.
- Gratitude: have a spirit of curiosity and gratitude. We’re bringing together a group of fascinating people, most of whom likely have never met each other…how amazing is that? Get to know each other, and make the cohort what you want it to be for yourself.
But helping founders is just half of the equation. If a startup chooses to raise capital, who they raise from can have an incredible impact on its trajectory in the early days.
Founders love raising from other founders and experienced operators. They’ve been there before, have great advice, networks, and know their markets better than anyone else. If we’re trying to 10x the number of world-class founders, it stands to reason we should help grow the number of top investors who will back them early, as well.
- Sacredness: By default, everything is off the record. Many in this group are searching for something deeper in their lives or making big transitions, and others may not yet have publicly shared this with friends, family, or employers. Please honor that, and avoid sharing anything you learn about each other without explicit permission.
- Respect: You are all now part of the On Deck family. You’re all embarking on what will surely be a rollercoaster of a journey — but you’re in this shared experience together. With that comes a sense of responsibility: be inclusive, stick together, and respect one another.
- Gratitude: have a spirit of curiosity and gratitude. We’re bringing together 200 fascinating people, most of whom likely have never met each other…how amazing is that? Get to know each other, and make the cohort what you want it to be for yourself.
On Deck lives by four core guiding values, crucial to the culture we strive to foster in the community:
- Service: On Deck is bigger than any one person. For this community to thrive, it must be driven by a spirit of service to others. Be generous with your time, knowledge, and support. Karma has a way of finding its way back.
- Sacredness: By default, everything is off the record. Many in this group are searching for something deeper in their lives or making big transitions, and others may not yet have publicly shared this with friends, family, or employers. Please honor that, and avoid sharing anything you learn about each other without explicit permission.
- Respect: You are all now part of the On Deck family. You’re all embarking on what will surely be a rollercoaster of a journey — but you’re in this shared experience together. With that comes a sense of responsibility: be inclusive, stick together, and respect one another.
- Gratitude: have a spirit of curiosity and gratitude. We’re bringing together 200 fascinating people, most of whom likely have never met each other…how amazing is that? Get to know each other, and make the cohort what you want it to be for yourself.
On Deck lives by four core guiding values, crucial to the culture we strive to foster in the community:
- Service: On Deck is bigger than any one person. For this community to thrive, it must be driven by a spirit of service to others. Be generous with your time, knowledge, and support. Karma has a way of finding its way back.
- Sacredness: By default, everything is off the record. Many in this group are searching for something deeper in their lives or making big transitions, and others may not yet have publicly shared this with friends, family, or employers. Please honor that, and avoid sharing anything you learn about each other without explicit permission.
- Respect: You are all now part of the On Deck family. You’re all embarking on what will surely be a rollercoaster of a journey — but you’re in this shared experience together. With that comes a sense of responsibility: be inclusive, stick together, and respect one another.
- Gratitude: have a spirit of curiosity and gratitude. We’re bringing together 200 fascinating people, most of whom likely have never met each other…how amazing is that? Get to know each other, and make the cohort what you want it to be for yourself.
On Deck lives by four core guiding values, crucial to the culture we strive to foster in the community:
- Service: On Deck is bigger than any one person. For this community to thrive, it must be driven by a spirit of service to others. Be generous with your time, knowledge, and support. Karma has a way of finding its way back.
- Sacredness: By default, everything is off the record. Many in this group are searching for something deeper in their lives or making big transitions, and others may not yet have publicly shared this with friends, family, or employers. Please honor that, and avoid sharing anything you learn about each other without explicit permission.
- Respect: You are all now part of the On Deck family. You’re all embarking on what will surely be a rollercoaster of a journey — but you’re in this shared experience together. With that comes a sense of responsibility: be inclusive, stick together, and respect one another.
- Gratitude: have a spirit of curiosity and gratitude. We’re bringing together 200 fascinating people, most of whom likely have never met each other…how amazing is that? Get to know each other, and make the cohort what you want it to be for yourself.
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