Super angel
Super angel was a term used in the early 2010s to describe venture capital investors who had once been angel investors and subsequently raised small venture capital funds.
Super angels share some characteristics of both angel investors and venture capitalists. According to Fast Company, super angels "raise funds like venture capitalists but invest early like angels and in sums between the two, on average from $250,000 to $500,000." Unlike traditional angel investors, they are typically professionals for whom investing is their primary occupation.
Features
Some common features of super angels include:- Creating a professionally managed investment fund
- Serial investing
- Investing at a seed round in startup companies
- Funding rounds in the range of $50,000 to several million dollars, larger than typical "friends and family" rounds but smaller than most venture rounds
- Taking an active role in portfolio companies
- Raising money from general partners and other principals, without passive investors in the fund
- Fund principals who are experienced entrepreneurs
- Avoid joining boards as a long-term investor in favor of owning stakes for several weeks
List of investors described as super angels
| Name of fund | Key people | Portfolio companies |
| 500 Startups | Dave McClure | SlideShare, CrowdFlower, Udemy |
| Felicis Ventures | Aydin Senkut | Meraki, Mint.com |
| Floodgate Fund | Mike Maples Jr., Ann Miura-Ko | Chegg, Dasient, Digg, Smule, Twitter |
| Founder Collective | Caterina Fake, Chris Dixon, David Frankel, Eric Paley, Mark Gerson, Micah Rosenbloom, Zach Klein, Bill Trenchard | Minyanville Media |
| Founders Co-op | Andy Sack, Chris DeVore | - |
| Harrison Metal | Michael Dearing, Erik Rannala | AdMob, Lumosity, Aardvark |
| IA Ventures | Roger Ehrenberg, Brad Gillespie | Recorded Future |
| K9 Ventures | Manu Kumar | CrowdFlower |
| Lerer Hippeau Ventures | Kenneth Lerer, Ben Lerer | |
| Lowercase Capital | Chris Sacca | Twitter, bit.ly, Auctomatic, Uber |
| Social Leverage | Howard Lindzon | TweetDeck, bit.ly |
| SoftTech VC | Jeff Clavier | Tapulous, RapLeaf |
| SV Angel | Ron Conway, David Lee, Mike Ghaffary, Brian Pokorny | Google, Ze Frank, AppNexus, Ask Jeeves, Aster Data Systems, Attributor, Blippy, Bring Light, BuzzFeed, CastTV, Digg, Foursquare, Kaboodle, Knewton, Clickable, MerchantCircle, Mint.com, PayPal, PBwiki, Seesmic, Square, Swipely, Twitter, Weebly, Zooomr |
| The Founders Fund | Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek | Gowalla, Causes, Collaborative Drug Discovery,, Facebook, Friendster, Geni.com, Ironport, Mint.com, OLX, Palantir Technologies, Pathway Genomics, Powerset, Quantcast, Rapleaf, Raptr, Slide.com, SmartDrive, SpaceX, Spotify, Yammer, YouNoodle |
| Thrive Capital | Joshua Kushner | Vostu |