Are you an accredited investor?<p>Do you have a net worth (assets minus liabilities) greater than $1 million after removing positive home equity? In the alternative, have you had income of $250k or more for both of the last two years with a reasonable expectation of hitting that for this year?<p>If you are an accredited investor, you're an angel investor basically as soon as you start calling yourself one, and what you now seek is "dealflow." Many YC companies are, coming out of YC, quite hot properties with many people attempting to invest in them, and probably need a fairly compelling pitch to be allowed to give them money. This would often include an introduction from someone the founders trust, a reasonable expectation that you'd be writing a fairly substantial check (minimum viable check for a new angel is about $25k, below that you need an extraordinarily high non-cash value to be worth the founders' time in closing you), or accomplishments which demonstrated that you'd add a lot of value to the company.<p>As to how to figure out which companies are raising after YC, you have access to the same AngelList, TechCrunch, and Hacker News that every other angel investor uses. A lot of the "hot" deals only appear on these retrospectively -- to get in on them early enough for it to matter you have to have your ear to the ground and know people. If that's a priority for you, I'd make it a priority to have coffee dates with people who have lots of YC founders / etc in their social circles and impress upon them that you're Good People.<p>If you're not an accredited investor, you'll find it very difficult to invest in YC graduates unless you somehow identify them prior to YC. You're legally capable of investing in private placements -- sometimes called "friends and family rounds" -- but part of the magic of YC is that YC companies have much, much better access to money than F&F rounds and, as a result, they don't often have to resort to raising them after YC.<p>This is orthogonal to the question "Should you invest in YC companies?" I feel obligated to say that they are, universally, extraordinarily risky investments with a high probability of going to zero, and if this would discomfit you, you should not invest in them (or other tech startups).
If you're an accredited investor, there are actually two YC companies that allow you to do this, FundersClub and Wefunder.<p>I believe both allow you to invest through a fund or individually, though you don't manage the investment personally.<p>Otherwise, you first need a good network to know when these companies are raising money and usually a track record of funding and helping companies succeed or building them yourself.<p>If you're looking for private sale of shares, sometimes they come up on sharespost.
Thanks to you both for the responses. I live in NYC which is the difficulty in really being able to network in Silicon Valley. I have made some investments via funders club, and love the service, I was just looking for a way to invest directly rather than just in a fund. Again Thanks for your time.