- Many startup founders are also active startup investors.
- They use their experience and connections to help other companies succeed for their own benefit.
- We asked these professional multitaskers what they look for in a venture capital investment.
Behind a great startup founder is often another founder who advises and invests in their potential.
Founders often look for other founders to add to their compensation scale because they know how to build a successful and enduring company. In recent years, an increasing number of early-stage startups have tended to raise large sums of money from a few large VC firms in favor of collecting large numbers of small checks from individual investors who may also be running the company at the same time.
Two dozen investors told Insider that the founders and operators of these startups are still writing a lot of checks even amid the funding crunch.
For this list, we reached out to our network of founders and investors to identify those who both run companies and invest. To qualify, founders must meet the following criteria (we note any exceptions on their resumes):
- They still work at the startups they founded.
- To date, their startup has raised over $3 million in funding.
- Since January, they have written at least two checks to startups as angel investors or fund managers.
Here they are, in alphabetical order by last name.
Let us know who we missed by reaching out to Melia Russell at mrussell@insider.com or on Twitter @meliarobin.
