Angel investing insights with Paul Forster: Founder of Indeed.com and angel with +90 portfolio companies.

The importance of founder-market fit, the power of diversification, and balancing founder support with the investor perspective.

Jan 09, 2024

Transcript

Join us as Tom Wilson from Seedcamp and Anthony Danon from Cocoa talk to Paul Forster, co-founder & CEO of Indeed and active angel investor with 90+ investments.

Paul Forster co-founded Indeed and was CEO until the company’s acquisition in late 2012. Today, Indeed is the leading job site globally, with over 100 million unique visitors in more than 50 countries and 26 languages.

Paul previously co-founded the leading job site for financial professionals, and before that was an investment professional at International Finance Corporation. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and Master’s degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

Paul loves working with founders and loves their energy, creativity, and variety. As an investor, he enjoys the intellectual stimulation from getting to know different industries and sectors and from working with different kinds of people.

We invite you to listen to this discussion below for some wonderful stories; besides the actionable advice, you can have a sneak peek at the below.

Scroll on ⏬ For the chapters & core learnings 🧠

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Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction to the Super Angel Podcast
00:01:54 - Early stage investing and angel investing
00:04:50 - Mentally stimulating work and investing in focused founders
00:06:30 - Investing in UK-based Companies
00:08:14 - Approaching New Deals and Portfolio Diversity
00:10:00 - Finding the Balance Between Diversification and Support
00:11:42 - Investing in Founders with Domain Expertise
00:13:22 - Pattern Recognition and Experience
00:15:05 - Collaborating with Other Investors in the Ecosystem
00:16:51 - Investing in Early Stage Companies
00:18:35 - Leading a Round
00:20:16 - Examples of Successful Investments
00:22:09 - Investing in VC Funds
00:23:58 - Core Learnings from Angel Investing
00:25:49 - Key Factors for Successful Investing
00:27:44 - Follow-on Investing and Objective Decision Making
00:29:28 - The Importance of the Right Team and Market Opportunity
00:30:57 - The Importance of Capital Efficiency in Building a Business
00:32:37 - Lessons from Angel Investing
00:34:28 - Building networks for international investments

Journey into Angel Investing

I lived in the US for many years & started a couple of businesses there.
My second business was Indeed.
I started it early in the 2004, and sold it in 2012, when I moved to the UK, where I am originally from. I’ve been doing early-stage investing in tech startups since then. That was about nine years ago, and it’s been a great jouney.
I never did angel investing when I was a founder, which is obviously different from what we see today. Now, many founders and operators are going angel investing while building their businesses.

Most Counterintuitive Learning in Angel Investing

Don’t be too rigid in your investment thesis.
You can invest in different thesis that may do contradictory well to each other.

Top Tips for Angels Looking to Invest Internationally

Build networks, especially with investors
If you can build relationships with both VCs, and angels, pick a particular market and focus on that.
Tap in the ecosystem of that market and build upon that.

Core Advice to Your 10-Year-Younger Self

Start slowly as an angel investor.
It’s almost counterintuitive. When you are a founder, you’re being rewarded for moving fast. If you don’t move too fastm you’re unlikely to succed.
With investing, it’s almost the opposite. If you move too fast you can fail because you rush your decisions, and you can’t iterate as founders do.
Here, decisions are binary.
You’re the quality of your deal-flow, and the quality of your decision-making will improve over time. So, take it easy at the beginning.