Learnings of Being an OG Angel Investor: Ron Conway and Topher Conway | Upfront Summit 2022

**Mark Suster** (0:03)
It's my great pleasure to welcome both Ron and Topher from SV Angel today, so I'm excited to hear what they have to say. I know that everyone now is an angel investor. I know you run a fund, but an angel on a side hustle. I know that you run companies, but you're also angel investors. But this is the OG angel investors. So what I want to ask, and I'm going to start Ron with you, is how did you get into angel investing in the first place? What was your thesis? And why were there so few people doing it when you started?

**Ron Conway** (0:44)
Well, there was no thesis to me becoming an angel investor. The word I would use is serendipity. And let me tell you why. I was an operator myself before I started angel investing. I helped start a couple of companies. The most notable one was Altos Computer. Don Valentine, who is the OG OG, the founder of Sequoia Capital, and look at Sequoia today.
Don Valentine was on the board of the computer company that I co-founded called Altos Computer. And Altos Computer went public, was very successful. But we ultimately had to sell the company. And I'm going to digress for a second here, but I always tell founders, if you don't disrupt yourself, you will be disrupted. And we were a microcomputer company.
And personal computers connected to networks disrupted us. And to the point that we had to run for cover and we sold the company. So, but everybody was happy. Sequoia did well. And so Don said, because we had become fast friends, Don said, what do you want to do next? And I said, and he was thinking, would I go work at a Sequoia company or something? And I said, hey Don, now that it's all over, I got to share something with you. I don't like having people report to me. I don't want a thousand people reporting to me again. And he said, oh my God, if you don't want people reporting to you, you should just become an angel investor. And I'll have you come to some board meetings and watch how I give advice to founders. Because you're an operator already, you'll pick it up quick. And I think you'll like this thing called angel investing. So from that point on, 30 plus years ago, I've been angel investing. SV Angel invests in 50 to 60 companies a year.
You know, we're very consistent. You know, why weren't there more angel investors? It was a brand new field. I mean, not that many people even knew that you, that there was such a thing. So.

**Mark Suster** (3:20)
So the S in SV Angel actually stands for Sequoia?

**Ron Conway** (3:25)
No, Silicon Valley. But kudos to Don Valentine and Sequoia. The funny thing is Topher started investing much earlier in his career than I did.

**Mark Suster** (3:40)
So third grade, I understand, is when you started?

**Topher Conway** (3:43)
Just about.

**Mark Suster** (3:45)
Tell us a little bit about how you got involved.

**Topher Conway** (3:46)
I think I was about 13 years old when I first invested in Napster. So he would ask us to diligence companies because we're the users, and used Napster and had that moment of, oh my gosh, this is going to change the world.

**Mark Suster** (3:59)
You were 13 So my kids are screwed. And so you actually invested in Napster?

**Topher Conway** (4:06)
I did. I still have the stock certificate.

**Mark Suster** (4:08)
You're kidding me.

**Topher Conway** (4:09)
A nice piece of paper to have.

**Mark Suster** (4:10)
And tell us a little bit about what came after that, how you got interested in what other things you invested in.

**Topher Conway** (4:16)
At that moment, I got to know both Sean's, and I was still very young, obviously. Went to college.
And in 2009, I was living in LA. Was trying to move back up to San Francisco to get into tech as the LA tech scene. Sorry, in 2009 wasn't what it is today. And so started working at SV Angel. Just as a part-time gig. Had no intention to stay. The idea was to go jump to a portfolio company, and then maybe circle back to investing one day. But a couple weeks in, I kind of said, this is it. Can I join the team full time? And so that was 13 years ago.

**Mark Suster** (4:55)
And you didn't want people reporting to you either.

**Topher Conway** (4:57)
I did not.

**Mark Suster** (4:58)
What have you learned, either of you, from decades of investing in entrepreneurs? What strategies worked? What didn't work? Talk a little bit about what you learned.