Think outside the box: invest $5K in 7 startups. How you pick the 7 is of course the tricky part, but much less work than actually being the one coding, designing and selling stuff.
The other tricky part is that any startup with more than a few brain cells won't take investment from someone who isn't an accredited investor. If the original poster isn't a millionaire (outside of real estate), then it becomes pretty awkward to invest.
I've kind of been wondering if it would be possible to have some sort of mini-stock exchange for startup companies. Like the Toronto Venture Exchange, but specifically for startup tech companies.
Just completely eliminate the VC/angel seed system, and replace it with a democratized, electronic, exchange.
That was one of our goals when we started fairsoftware (now foundrs.com), but US regulations prevented us from going all the way. I think we were pretty good at bypassing a lot of SEC regulations (we invented a concept of "virtual shares"), but cash for shares was off-limits. And we had some pretty good lawyers to help us out.
regulated like crazy. you can't promote the sale of a stock without it being publicly traded. secondmarket gets around this by first being regulated and second being a matching service and not an open market.
Less say but if you think about it, are the chances higher that 1 of say 7 startups will succeed (when you have the choice of being highly selective when choosing them) or that 1 of your 2 - 3 starts with succeed to the point of bringing in 5000 a month?
Let's say one in three succeeds. Then 1 of mine will succeed, and 2 of the 6 investments. But mine are owned by me, the investments are only owned in a small part by me. Still sounds like a better idea to create my own.
I think the assumption is that your startup is controlled by you, but other startups are potentially controlled by people prone to failure. The odds for your own startup -should- be better than others.
Of course, if you're prone to failure, the reverse is true... But if you know you're prone to failure, why would you try something as risky as a startup in the first place?
