Angel Investing- insider secrets to wealth creation, Sanjay Kulkarni
Before starting any book, I tend do at least an hour worth of research on picking it. But this time, whether it was the curiosity of what’s inside the book written by someone you have met and acquainted with or was it because the content is in line with what I do- I don’t have an answer. I just started reading without an intention to complete the book.
This will be the first complete book I have read on angel investments, authored by an Indian. To be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found the chapters to be highly relatable to the Indian scenario. The book can be recommended to anyone who has a flair of learning something new. You can find cartoon strips, quotes and even excerpts of poems throughout the book on wealth creation!
Sanjay Kulkarni is one of the founding members of Mumbai Angels and an experienced investor. Through this book, he places the what, why and how of angel investing in India effortlessly, with the help of cases on Indian startups. His writing is convincingly transparent on major pitfalls and mishaps in the industry. As a noob investor, you can avoid these costly mistakes and save your pockets from massive burns. Or may not. He has clearly emphasized the importance of timing of investing in promising ideas. Good ideas in the future may be bad ones now. One can find unheard stories of the most famous unicorns and not so popular deals just like you were at the pitch. Oyo, InMobi, Serial Innovations, mKhoj to name a few of the cases picked up in the book. While he busts some of the common myths associated with angel investments, he also up-skill the reader with industry norms of investing, instruments and vehicles used, how to start for a beginner from scanning pitch decks to due diligence and signing the agreements.
Being frank about the types of risks involved and how to limit them to some extend listed however may not be an exhaustive one, but can be used as an upright guide for investors starting out. One may suggest to read Peter Thiel’s ‘Zero to One-’ or Peter Cowly’s ‘The Invested Investor’. But you cannot find what’s in this book anywhere else, because it’s the author’s conversance, findings and encounters while investing in India. On the other side, this book is highly recommended to startup founders for understanding the thought process going on in the other side of the table.
