Jul 16, 2021

Sifted | Kim Fai Kok | Jul 15, 2021 Even if you don’t have a lot of capital to invest, you can start investing in companies just by giving your time, and gradually transition to investing with your money. Four months ago, I stepped down after a decade at Swedish unicorn Truecaller to become a full-time angel investor. That’s something I never thought I’d do, especially considering I didn’t know what an angel investor was before joining a startup. I was once intimidated by the idea of becoming an angel investor — and in particular by the thought of how much money I thought it required — like so many other people I talk to. Sure, my experience at Truecaller has now given me capital to invest, but it’s possible to get into angel investing with a small amount of money — because that’s exactly what I did. It all starts with learning  When I joined Truecaller in 2011 as employee number two, I had just graduated from university and had no clue what to expect from working in a startup. Back then, the ecosystem was not as developed as it is now, so finding advisors and people you could learn from was much harder before. However, I reached out to other companies, people and investors I looked up to from all over the world. I looked for the best people in their field — from finance, communications, product management to angel investing. I spent hours crafting personal notes about why I wanted to speak to them and what I wanted to learn. You’d be surprised how helpful people are as long as you’re genuine and are clear about what you need help with. (Of course respecting people’s time and learning when to accept a ‘No’ is also important!) Those meetings made me a more confident operator and helped me build a strong network across the tech and startup community. This network is what helped me start to see dealflow for potential angel investments and get closer to founders. Once you have a network, start investing your time  As I started to build up experience of my own, I stopped always being the person asking for advice. Instead, people started coming to me to exchange ideas. No matter how busy I was, I carved out two to three hours per week to either help or learn from entrepreneurs and operators, be it over lunch, phone calls or walk-and-talks. These exchanges helped me get out of the day-to-day chaos of startup life, to reflect and collect my thoughts systematically. Along the way, I realised that the advice and encouragement that I gave to entrepreneurs I met is exactly what they look for with angel investors. Founders started to treat me as a trusted friend and advisor, someone they wanted to text or hop on a call with when they had a conundrum. And they introduced me to other founders. In short, by investing time, if not money, I had landed the kind of dealflow great angels have. The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org FFCON21 ON-DEMAND VIDEOS NOW AVAILABLE! Support NCFA by Following us on Twitter!