Talk:Super angel

Please add ron conway

(responding to the heading) - he's there, in the column for his fund, SV Angel. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:07, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Micro-VCs vs. True Super Angels

I've split the list into two parts, based on my best assessment as to whether the investor was primarily investing other people's money. If I have mis-categorized any of them, and you are SURE that you are correct, feel free to move the members of each group to the appropriate position. Yorker (talk) 07:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the bold edit. I am reverting it for a number of reasons, including: (1) accuracy - although I believe you are technically correct with respect to the traditional definition of angel investors and there are indeed some who critique use of the term "super angel" with respect to small funds, all of these individuals are described by the reliable sources as super angels. In fact, several of the people you reclassify as not being super angels (Ron Conway of SV Angel, Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Jeff Clavier of Softech) are in fact the eponymous examples of super angels. Further, many or most of the individuals listed as venture capitalists are indeed angel investors, whether or not they are also venture capitalists. Ron Conway, as an example, has made many angel investments apart from his fund. (2) Opinion. As rewritten the page is no longer an article about what a super angel is, but an opinion piece arguing the position that the word is a misnomer. (3) Tone. Rather than factual, the tone is now expository and explanatory, written in the voice of an expert author rather than an encyclopedia ("are more correctly described", "are best described", "because..."). (4) Unsourced and poorly sourced. The new explanation of what an angel is, what a "micro vc" (not a common term) is, and who is in which category are all either completely unsourced (and therefore look like personal opinion), or as with the lede are sourced to a blog, which is not a reliable source. Even if the classification of other people's money versus personal investment is 100% correct, without sourcing there is no way to verify it and the list becomes a dead end for other authors to evaluate, improve, keep up to date, etc. (5) Style. Bolding lists of explanatory statements is not normal Wikipedia markup style. I do think there's some good stuff there, but overall the edit puts the article on the wrong path. What I would suggest is that if we need to point out the critique that the concept is a misnomer, we need to start with the sourced content of what a super angel is and who the super angels are, and then mention the critique if we can find reliable sources that describe it. Thanks again, - Wikidemon (talk) 06:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

You make very fair points about style, tone, and, to some extent, about opinion. But in this case, who would you accept as a 'canonical source' on the definition? You, in YOUR opinion, state ".;.Ron Conway, Dave McClure and Jeff Clavier...are in fact the eponymous examples of super angels." If, however, I can point you to statements by one or more (or all, for that matter) of those explicitly named people, stating explicitly that they are, indeed, venture capitalists and not angels, would you accept that as dispositive? How about a definition on the web site of the Angel Capital Association or the Angel Capital Education Foundation or the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds or the National Angel Capital Organization or Angelsoft or the Kaufmann Foundation that says the same thing? You mention "described by the reliable sources", but what if we end up with dueling 'reliable sources'? I'm happy to rewrite my edit in better wiki-style, but the fact is that the article as it stands now is simply, factually, wrong, and that is NOT a good thing for Wikipedia.Yorker (talk) 02:33, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

(Also, I note that you reverted the additions of Dyson and Rose. Is that because you dispute Crunchbase as a reliable source?)Yorker (talk) 02:38, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the courteous and thoughtful response. I can help with the Wiki formatting too. It was a full revert, and given the sheer number of changes in a single edit I was not able to separately review every change. My opinion on the matter is stated on this page, but I try to make sure that the prose in the article reflects only sourced text. Each of these people is sourced to an article describing them as VC, and for these three examples at least I know there are many strong sources for that. McClure has described himself as a VC to be sure, and worked for a while for the Founders Fund. I belive he has also described himself as an angel investor. If a person says "I am a VC" or a source says as much then it might merit a footnote that they have also described themselves or been described as VC. If a person says "I am not an angel investor" or "I am not a super angel" then that merits a bigger footnote, or even omission from the list because then we have a conflict between what sources say about someone and what someone says about themselves. Going further into personal opinion, back when being a VC was cool and had a lot of status, a lot of people who were not really VCs would self-describe as such. Now VC funds are having a lot of difficulty and super-angels get all the press, so people style themselves that way publicly. I don't think the two are mutually contradictory... you can be an angel investor personally while also working for a VC firm. Second, the term super-angel is used to describe a class of people who are not classic angels. So perhaps this article is about a term, and phenomenon, of a group of investors in a small business community, some of whom are actual angels, and some of whom are small VCs. Wikipedia discourages articles about neologisms so the article is a stronger one if it's about the phenomenon and cultural perception, not just about the coining and use of a word. Maybe it's a term like Prosumer or semi-professional or virtual office that either straddles two categories or doesn't mean exactly what the term suggests it means. - Wikidemon (talk) 05:28, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that the article begins by flatly stating "Super angel investors (or "super-angels") are a class of serial angel investors..." and that is clearly, positively, absolutely and incontrovertibly wrong, because the defining difference between an "angel investor" and a "venture capitalist" is that the former is investing his or her own money, and the latter is a professional money manager who is investing the funds of others. While some, even most, of the people named may at one point have been investing for their own account (at which time they were absolutely angel investors, and perhaps even 'super'), their current membership in the class, such as it is, is due to the funds of OTHERS that they have raised, and are now investing. This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact, and each and every one of the people listed will agree with that, as will every one of the official organizations noted above. This is the case even though citations can be made to an infinite number of sources that use the term incorrectly. Note that I am not contesting that the term "super angel" has gained currency in certain circles as an unfortunate (and incorrect) tag to describe a class of seed stage venture capitalists with small funds. Nor am I contesting that an entry for the term belongs in Wikipedia. What I take issue with is the flat-out misstatement that opens the article. The term has only recently begun to appear within the past year or so, and as you note, it is not the purpose of Wikipedia to promote (or define) neologisms, when people come to search for information. So as to avoid another edit war I propose to begin cleaning up the article by changing the opening line to read something along the lines of: "Super angel" is a term that has been used to describe a class of seed stage venture capitalists who typically invest in startup companies alongside traditional angel investors. If we can agree on that, I believe we can then proceed to incrementally edit the article (discussing each edit here first) to make it more accurate and useful.Yorker (talk) 08:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I get the point. Wikipedia is about sources, not WP:TRUTH. But when the sources are clearly wrong, we can hedge our bets by not using them or by adding another source that points out the majority of sources are incorrect. I would start by modifying the lead sentence in two ways: (1) remove "class" (because it's not clear that it's really a new class of people and funds so much as it is a recognized group of investors, and/or a new way of looking at or describing that group), and (2) remove the word "angel". It then becomes: "Super angel investors (or "super-angels") are a group of serial investors... If we can find a good source for the characterization we could be more explicit and say that they are "a group of seed-stage investors, operating alone or in small venture capital funds,..." The source need not be cited in the lede. Per the MOS it's a better practice to have a cited statement in the body of the article, and then summarize it in the lede without citations. I thought about opening the article with the "is a term that has been used", but that suggests that the article is about the neologism, not the phenomenon behind it. I think it's important to cover that it is a neologism, and as I said include a critique of the use of the term, but it will be a better article if it stays focused more on the substance behind the language. Thanks for the offer regarding editing pace. I think the incremental nature is more important than discussing every last change here. It's just that doing a major rewrite at once, particularly in a single save, makes things hard to understand and discuss. - Wikidemon (talk) 15:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

This is really not a common phrase currently and is confusing on specific investor pages since at first glance it appears to be a subjective assessment. - Ffkup87 (talk) 15:00, 25 Spril 2023 (UTC)