Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

The old guard of angel investing had an unofficial minimum: $25,000 per check. If you couldn't write that, you weren't serious. You weren't worth the founder's time. You definitely weren't getting into competitive deals.

That gatekeeping is dying, and good riddance.

The rise of smaller check angel investing communities is one of the most important shifts happening in startup funding right now. Not because it's making people rich (though it might), but because it's fundamentally changing who gets to be an investor.

Why $25K Checks Kept Most People Out

Let's do some basic math. Traditional angel investing wisdom says you need a portfolio of at least 20 companies to see meaningful returns. At $25,000 per deal, that's $500,000 in startup capital. Add the fact that you shouldn't invest more than 10% of your net worth in illiquid assets, and you're looking at a $5 million net worth requirement just to invest responsibly.

That's not most people. That's not even most successful professionals.

A senior software engineer at a FAANG company making $400K per year still needs almost a decade of aggressive saving to hit that threshold. A founder who just had a $10M exit might be comfortable writing $25K checks, but plenty of $2-3M exit founders aren't.

The system was built for people who were already wealthy, which meant it perpetuated itself. Rich people invested in each other's companies, made returns, got richer, and the cycle continued.

How Smaller Minimums Change the Game

When communities drop minimums to $1,000-$10,000, the math flips completely.

A 20-company portfolio at $1,000 per deal is $20,000 total. That's accessible to someone making $100K per year who saves aggressively for a couple years. A $5,000 per deal portfolio is $100,000 total, which is realistic for mid-career professionals.

Angel Squad has invested over $30 million across 70+ startups with minimum checks as low as $1,000. Their members aren't trust fund kids. They're doctors learning about venture for the first time. They're former founders who want to stay involved in startups without starting another company. They're operators at tech companies who finally have enough savings to start deploying capital.

The demographic shift is real. According to recent data, 85% of new angel investors in communities like this are first-time angels. Many are women and underrepresented minorities who were historically locked out of traditional angel groups.

What You Actually Get for Small Checks

Some people assume smaller checks mean smaller returns or less access. That's not how startup equity works.

If you invest $1,000 in a company at a $5M valuation and it exits for $500M, you've made 100x. Whether your initial check was $1,000 or $100,000, the multiple is the same. The dollar amount of your return obviously differs, but the return on invested capital is identical.

And here's what matters more at pre-seed: you're buying the same equity as everyone else in the round. There's no distinction between the angel who wrote $1,000 and the one who wrote $10,000. You're both shareholders with the same rights.

What you won't get is board seats or aggressive information rights. But at pre-seed, most angels aren't getting those anyway. What you do get is exposure to high-potential companies, learning opportunities, and the ability to build a track record.

The Best Small-Check Communities Right Now

Not all angel investing communities are created equal, especially for smaller checks.

Look for communities that have actual deal flow, not just networking events. Angel Squad shares 2-3 vetted deals monthly from Hustle Fund's pipeline. That's not them scrambling to find deal flow. That's systematic access to a VC firm that sees 1,000+ companies every month.

Look for education. Writing $1,000 checks is cheap enough that you can learn by doing, but it's way better to learn from people who've already made the expensive mistakes. Communities that run live deal reviews, bring in guest speakers from larger funds, and have active discussion forums are worth the membership fee.

Look for global reach. The best deals aren't all in San Francisco anymore. Communities with members across 40+ countries like Angel Squad means you're seeing opportunities in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa that coastal US investors are sleeping on.

Making $1K Checks Work in Your Portfolio

Here's how to actually deploy smaller checks intelligently.

Start with 10-15 companies minimum, not just 2-3. Diversification matters even more at small check sizes because you're not doing as much individual due diligence per company. You're essentially running a mini-index fund strategy.

Follow-on is your friend. Many of these deals have Pro Rata rights, meaning you can invest more in subsequent rounds if companies are doing well. Your $1,000 initial check gets you in the door. Your $5,000 follow-on check is where you might make real money.

Track everything. With smaller checks, it's tempting to treat them as lottery tickets and forget about them. Don't. Build a simple spreadsheet, attend portfolio company updates if offered, and pay attention to which types of deals are working.

What This Actually Costs

Angel Squad charges $875 per quarter or a one-time lifetime membership. If you write 8-10 checks per year at $1,000 each, that's $10,000 deployed plus $3,500 in membership fees your first year. Total out of pocket: $13,500.

Is that worth it? Depends on the alternative.

You could invest $13,500 in public markets and likely get 8-10% annual returns. Or you could build a pre-seed portfolio that, if even one company works, could return 50-100x. The risk-reward calculation is completely different.

And unlike traditional angel groups that charge carry on top of membership fees, communities like Angel Squad use standard AngelList SPV structures where everyone sees the same fees and economics.

The barrier to angel investing used to be money. Now it's just willingness to take risk and put in the work to learn. If you're a founder, you've already done harder things than evaluating pre-seed startups.

Time to stop watching from the sidelines.