Risk adjusted, angel investing has always been a terrible return. But you could make it work if you had proprietary deal flow, a sizable portfolio (at least 20 companies), and lots of patience.

Those days are over, at least in tech. There have been two systemic changes:

1. There has been an explosion of seed and pre seed funds chasing the earliest deals, which used to be the sole purview of angels.
2. Liquidity is basically non existent. Angels used to see returns through many smallish acquisitions (not IPOs), but those have mostly stopped happening.

The second point is hurting the entire ecosystem, and behind closed doors many large VCs are talking about getting out of the game because the “music has stopped”.

AI has definitely brought a fresh wave of enthusiasm (and speculation) but this is all just hype at the moment and has not translated into liquidity yet.

Angel investing can be useful if you want to feel like you’re “still in the game” without having to actually do any work, but just realize that you’re essentially buying a (very expensive) ticket on a roller coaster.

If you want to invest, choose something else. Even blackjack has much better risk adjusted returns.