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

Walk into any venture capital office and ask how they source deals, and you'll get some version of "warm introductions from our network." That's the polite way of saying the same small group of people send deals back and forth to each other.

Hustle Fund does something different. They review over 1,000 pitch decks every single month, and most of those come from cold applications. No warm intro required. No exclusive network needed. Just founders building interesting companies who submit through the website.

The challenge? Figuring out which 2-3 of those 1,000 opportunities are worth sharing with Angel Squad members and backing with actual capital.

The Volume Game and Why It Matters

Here's why volume matters in early-stage investing: at pre-seed and seed stage, you're making bets on founders and markets long before clear product-market fit emerges. The failure rate is high. Most VCs compensate by cherry-picking only the "safest" bets, which usually means founders with impressive pedigrees, warm introductions from trusted sources, and traction that's already obvious.

Hustle Fund's model flips this. By looking at 1,000+ deals monthly, they can find the outliers that other investors miss. The immigrant founder solving a problem in their home country. The technical team with no fundraising experience but a product people actually want. The startup in a geography that coastal VCs ignore.

This volume also means Hustle Fund's pattern recognition is constantly getting refined. When you see 1,000 decks a month, you start noticing what separates compelling opportunities from mediocre ones. That institutional knowledge compounds over time and gets shared with Angel Squad members through weekly pitch events and educational sessions.

The First Filter: Can This Be Big?

Before anyone at Hustle Fund even looks at a deck in detail, they ask one question: if everything goes right, can this be a huge business?

This isn't about whether the startup will succeed. It's about whether the market opportunity is large enough and the business model scales in a way that could generate venture-scale returns. A profitable lifestyle business generating $5 million in annual revenue is great for the founder but won't return a venture fund.

The team looks for markets that can support billion-dollar outcomes. That doesn't mean the market needs to be $100 billion today, but there should be a credible path to building a business that captures meaningful share of a growing market.

Eric Bahn, Hustle Fund's co-founder, has said that their sweet spot is finding founders who are "a bit too early" for traditional VCs. These are companies solving real problems but haven't yet hit the metrics that make other investors comfortable. Hustle Fund's edge comes from understanding which of these early bets have the fundamentals to eventually become obvious wins.

The Founder Evaluation Framework

After market size, Hustle Fund digs into founder quality. This isn't about pedigree or where someone went to school. They're looking for specific signals that indicate a founder can navigate the chaos of building a startup.

First: does the founder deeply understand the problem they're solving? The best founders often have personal experience with the pain point. They're not building something because it seems like a good business opportunity. They're building it because they've lived the problem and know it needs to be solved.

Second: can the founder execute? This shows up in how they talk about their progress, the specific metrics they track, and their ability to learn quickly when something isn't working. Hustle Fund looks for founders who ship fast, talk to customers constantly, and adjust based on feedback.

Third: is the founder coachable? Stubbornness has its place in startups, but the best founders know what they don't know. They seek advice, consider different perspectives, and can articulate why they're choosing one path over another.

Evaluating Business Model Clarity

The third major filter is business model clarity. At the earliest stages, Hustle Fund isn't expecting proven unit economics or huge revenue. But they want to see that founders have thought through how money will flow in the business.

This means understanding customer acquisition costs, having a hypothesis about lifetime value, and knowing which channels will drive growth. If a founder can't articulate a plausible path to $10 million in annual revenue, that's a red flag.

Hustle Fund also evaluates competitive positioning here. It's not about whether competitors exist. Nearly every good market has competition. It's about whether the founder understands who they're competing with and why customers will choose them instead.

Shiyan Koh, Hustle Fund's third co-founder, has experience scaling NerdWallet from 10 to 450 employees. She brings an operator's lens to evaluating whether business models actually work once you try to scale them. That practical perspective filters out ideas that sound clever but break down in execution.

What Makes It to the Final 2-3 Deals?

After filtering through market size, founder quality, and business model clarity, Hustle Fund's team ends up with roughly 50-100 opportunities each month that could be interesting. The final filter is term structure and timing.

Hustle Fund writes checks at the pre-seed and seed stage, typically when valuations are $3-10 million post-money. If a startup is raising at $25 million post-money, it might be a great company but it's outside their fund's mandate. The math on early-stage investing requires buying equity at prices that leave room for significant upside.

Timing matters too. Is the round actually open? Are there other investors already committed? What does the founder need to hit their next milestone? These practical questions determine whether a deal is worth pursuing right now.

The 2-3 deals that make it through all these filters and get shared with Angel Squad represent the top 1% of opportunities Hustle Fund sees. Members can invest as little as $1,000 alongside the fund through AngelList SPVs, getting access to the same terms and opportunities as larger institutional investors.

Learning from the Process

One benefit of joining Angel Squad isn't just access to these curated deals. It's learning the framework Hustle Fund uses to evaluate all 1,000+ monthly applications.

Members attend pitch events where founders present and GPs ask questions in real-time. You hear which details matter and which are distractions. You see how experienced investors probe assumptions and spot red flags. You learn what makes a GP lean in versus politely pass.

This education compounds. After watching dozens of pitches, you start developing your own investment thesis. Maybe you notice you get most excited about tools for SMBs. Or you realize you have unique insight into healthcare operations that helps you evaluate med-tech startups. These patterns help you make better investment decisions over time.

Building Deal Flow Muscle

The other lesson from Hustle Fund's approach: consistent deal flow is more important than having one great connection who sends you occasional deals.

Many aspiring angels wait around hoping a friend will send them the next hot startup. That's passive investing. Hustle Fund's model shows what happens when you proactively source deals at scale. You see more opportunities, which means you can be more selective, which means your portfolio quality improves.

Angel Squad members benefit from this model without having to build their own deal sourcing machine. They get exposure to Hustle Fund's 1,000+ monthly deals but only see the final 2-3 that made it through the full evaluation process.

If you want to understand how professional investors evaluate early-stage opportunities, watching Hustle Fund's process in action through Angel Squad is one of the best educations available. You'll see the frameworks that separate signal from noise, learn which questions actually matter when assessing startups, and develop the pattern recognition that makes great investors great.