I've always wondered about the implicit economics of some of these angel groups. They seem to spend an awful lot of time getting to the point where they can write a small check. If the expected value of the rate of return of venture investments is ~20%, then it would seem they're barely making minimum wage.<p>On the other hand, contra the article, I've made angel investments after a pitch. Angels write small-ish checks, so making the founder do a song-and-dance over the course of many meetings would be uneconomic for him. It's a bit different if you're a partner at Greylock writing multi-million dollar checks.
Competitive pitch events seem like they would be detrimental to doing good business for both parties involved.<p>It's all just needless drama, as if multi million dollar investment deals aren't exciting enough. These kinds of things should be dealt with in a professional matter, especially given that I doubt most startups view their product as the equivalent of an unpurchased property on a Monopoly board during the tenth roll.<p>On an unrelated note, can someone please confirm my suspicions that the header image used is from Guildwars?