Angel Investing as a Civic Act (Creation vs Extraction)
Originally sent to Play Money subscribers from CEO, Cheryl Kellond · November 2025
Part of our ongoing reflections on angel investing, capital allocation, and the kind of infrastructure we believe private markets need next.
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🎱 A16Z — the mega VC firm that gobbles up 44% of institutional LP capital — got into a fight with the Pope on whether ethics matter in business and AI.
YC is being accused of optimizing for “fundability” over everything else in the quest for the $1B single-person company.
My husband, an architect for the tech elite, designed his first house with a self-sustaining bunker in the basement.
Sometimes I write about practical investing topics.
Other times I get woo.
You know what time this is.
Confession
🙏 I used to get jealous of other founders.
They were solving urgent problems.
With clever business models.
Quietly building “a business under the business” that could upend the status quo.
No one saw that for ours.
Angel?
Nice to have.
Already been done.
But recently something changed.
Investors started reaching out and instantly seeing the disruptive infrastructure underneath our interface.
Those “what’s the big vision?” chats turned from skeptical squints to vigorous nods.
Maybe the experts are finally ready for a new model.
And here’s what crystallized for me:
Our vision has an angel side and a devil side.
The Angel Side of Angel Investing: Funding Creation Over Extraction
😇 The angel side is opportunity.
The abundant upside when we make the world work differently.
Old games.
New revolution.
AI influencer bots.
Prediction markets.
Surveillance tech.
Institutional capital is flowing where profits are quickest and most extractive.
Creation is getting left behind.
Some of the highest-upside companies solving problems in health, climate, and equity are underfunded.
Not because they won’t deliver returns.
But because the immediate financial rewards of extraction will always look shinier than the patient rewards of creation.
The Math Behind Coordinated Angel Capital
Here’s the unlock:
We don’t need the old gatekeepers to fund creation.
We need coordinated angel capital.
If just 20% of accredited investors invested $10K a year, we would absolutely dwarf today’s institutional capital from seed to Series A.
Dwarf it.
That’s not fantasy.
That’s math.
And it reframes everything about how angel investing can function inside private markets.
Robinhood changed public markets by rewriting the experience.
The same can happen in private markets if we build from a different lens.
How Angel Investing Can Multiply Creation
Time is the most precious resource.
Investing shouldn’t require stepping out of real life.
It should integrate with it.
Money can and should do more than make more money.
Returns multiply when you layer:
- Purpose
- Learning
- Human connection
Creation is contagious.
Building something meaningful inspires others to do the same.
There is boatloads of money to be made in an economy that works like this.
</woo>
More next week on the devil’s side.
Is Angel Investing a Civic Act?
At an event in DC, one of our earliest Play Money angels asked:
Is investing a civic act?
It was a very DC framing.
But she was right.
A civic act is creation and defiance rolled together.
Choosing where capital flows is one of the most leveraged decisions in modern markets.
Angel investing is one of the cleanest ways to influence that flow.
PS: I’m not jealous anymore.
We are absolutely building one of those businesses underneath the business.
And yes.
Investing is a civic act.
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