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

Every new angel investor faces the same question: should I invest through a network or go solo?

The romantic answer is solo. You source your own deals. You make your own decisions. You don't share carry with anyone. You're the master of your own destiny.

The practical answer for most people is networks. Why?

The Solo Investing Reality

What solo angel investing actually looks like: You need to source your own deal flow, which means networking constantly to meet founders. You need to negotiate your own terms, which means understanding SAFEs, caps, discounts, and pro-rata rights. You need to manage your own cap table tracking and tax documents.

You're also making decisions in a vacuum. No one to discuss opportunities with. No experienced investors to learn from. No community to help pressure-test your thinking.

For most people starting out, this leads to one of two outcomes. Either you invest very rarely because you can't source good opportunities, or you invest badly because you don't know what you're doing.

Networks solve both problems by providing infrastructure and education that individual investors can't match.

Deal Flow is the Killer Advantage

The biggest advantage networks provide is consistent, quality deal flow. Good networks review hundreds or thousands of opportunities annually and surface only the most promising ones.

Angel Squad, for example, receives over 1,000 startup applications monthly through Hustle Fund's pipeline. Members see maybe 10-20 opportunities per month that have passed initial screening. That's a massive filtering advantage.

Solo investors don't have this luxury. You see whatever deals happen to come your way through your network. Maybe that's great opportunities. More likely it's your friend's underbaked startup or random cold emails from founders.

Even experienced solo angels spend enormous time on sourcing. Going to events. Taking coffee meetings. Reviewing cold inbound. It's a grind that networks handle systematically.

Education and Pattern Recognition

Networks compress the learning curve dramatically. Instead of making every mistake yourself, you learn from other investors' experiences.

You hear why an experienced VC passed on a deal that looked great to you. You see which companies that seemed mediocre initially actually succeeded. You develop frameworks for evaluation by watching how good investors think.

This pattern recognition takes years to develop solo. In networks, you can accelerate it to months by seeing more deals and getting direct feedback from experienced investors.

As Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and GP of Hustle Fund, explains: "For beginners, a bigger startup portfolio is better. It helps with diversification and helps you learn and get reps in. Investing requires practice like everything else."

Networks give you those reps at higher volume and quality than you'd get alone.

Terms and Negotiation

Solo investors often get terrible terms because they don't know what's market. Founders offer weird structures. You don't know if a 15% discount is good or you should push for 20%. You're not sure what cap makes sense.

Networks typically negotiate standard terms across all investments. You get market rates without needing to understand every nuance yourself.

This also means less friction. Founders know what to expect. Closing happens faster. You don't waste time going back and forth on terms you don't fully understand anyway.

Portfolio Construction Support

Most solo investors build terrible portfolios because they don't understand portfolio theory. They invest too much in too few companies. They concentrate in one industry or stage. They make decisions based on gut feel rather than diversification strategy.

Networks push you toward better portfolio construction. They make it easy to invest $1,000 checks across many companies rather than $10,000 into two or three. They encourage diversification across stages and markets.

Angel Squad's structure enables members to build properly diversified portfolios with $1,000 minimums across 10-15 companies rather than making concentrated bets.

The structure itself creates better investing habits than most people develop independently.

Administrative Burden

Solo investing means managing everything yourself. Tracking investments. Organizing tax documents. Following up with companies for updates. Dealing with paperwork for every transaction.

Networks handle this infrastructure. You invest through SPVs or rolling funds. All your tax documents come from one source. Updates are centralized. The administrative overhead is minimal.

This matters more than people realize. The boring operational stuff is what burns people out on angel investing, not the actual decision-making.

Community and Accountability

Investing solo is lonely. You make decisions alone. You don't have peers to discuss opportunities with. You don't have anyone pushing you to stay active and keep learning.

Networks provide community that keeps you engaged. You discuss deals with other investors. You share learnings about what's working. You stay motivated because you're part of something larger.

This social aspect also creates accountability. When you tell your community you're going to invest in 10 companies this year, you're more likely to actually do it than if it's just a private goal.

Access and Deal Quality

Solo investors often get access to worse deals. The best founders raise from experienced investors with strong networks. They don't need to waste time with every angel who wants to write a small check.

Networks aggregate small investors into meaningful check sizes that founders actually care about. A founder might not take your $1,000 solo, but they'll take $20,000 from a network of 20 investors.

You get access to better quality opportunities through networks than you likely would solo, especially when you're just starting.

As Eric Bahn, co-founder and GP of Hustle Fund, emphasizes: "Investing requires practice like everything else. So you have to see a lot and invest a lot to get better." Networks provide more opportunities to practice with better deals.

When Solo Makes Sense

Solo investing isn't wrong for everyone. It makes sense if you have great deal flow through your own network, deep expertise in evaluating opportunities, time to handle all the operational stuff, and capital to write meaningful checks ($25K+).

Some experienced angels transition from networks to solo investing after they've built track records and relationships. They've learned the ropes through communities and now have strong independent deal flow.

But for most people starting out, solo investing is like trying to learn guitar by figuring it out yourself versus taking lessons. Theoretically possible. Practically much harder and slower.

The Hybrid Approach

Many successful angels use a hybrid model. They participate in networks for consistent deal flow and education, while also making some solo investments through their personal networks.

This combines the advantages of both approaches. You get the infrastructure and learning from networks, plus the flexibility to pursue unique opportunities you source independently.

The network becomes your baseline investment practice. Solo deals are bonuses when something great comes along.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Solo investors often point to costs as the advantage. No membership fees. No carry sharing. All the upside is yours.

But this ignores opportunity cost. How much are you giving up by not seeing quality deal flow? How much will you lose making mistakes you could have avoided with education? How many years will you waste learning things networks could teach you in months?

For most people, the value of quality deal flow, education, and community far exceeds the cost of network participation. You're not paying for access to deals. You're paying for a learning environment that makes you a better investor.

Network Quality Matters Enormously

Not all networks are created equal. Bad networks charge high fees, provide limited deal flow, and don't actually help you improve as an investor.

Good networks curate deal flow aggressively, invest in educational programming, and build genuine communities of helpful investors. The difference in value is massive.

Look for networks with transparent track records, experienced leadership, high deal volume, and strong member engagement. Avoid networks that are mostly just email lists or require huge up-front commitments.

Making the Decision

If you're trying to decide between networks and solo investing, ask yourself honestly:

Do I have consistent access to quality deal flow? Do I understand investment terms and portfolio construction? Am I willing to handle all operational work myself? Do I have frameworks for evaluating opportunities? Can I learn effectively without structured education?

If you answered no to most of these, networks make sense. If you answered yes to all of them, solo might work.

For most people, especially those starting out, the honest answers point toward networks as the better choice.

As Shiyan Koh, co-founder and GP of Hustle Fund, notes: "Great founders can look like anyone and come from anywhere." Networks help you find those great founders beyond your immediate circle.

Angel Squad offers the infrastructure most investors need to be successful. Access to Hustle Fund's curated deal pipeline means seeing quality opportunities consistently. Educational programming from experienced VCs and successful founders accelerates your learning. A community of 2,000+ investors provides peer support and shared learnings.

 And $1,000 investment minimums let you build a diversified portfolio while learning what works. The network handles sourcing, terms, and administration so you focus on evaluation and learning, exactly where your effort should go when starting as an angel investor.

The choice between networks and solo investing isn't about which is objectively better. It's about which matches your current situation, expertise, and goals. For most people, networks provide the best path to becoming a successful angel investor.