Episode 33: "Angel Investing Isn't a Trending Topic" | ACA Chair Emeritus Marcia Dawood on Angel Investment Cycles, Using Philanthropic Capital for For-Profit Ventures, and Making Fundraising Easier for Entrepreneurs

Insights from an award-winning author and podcast host whose advocacy work is reshaping how angels invest and entrepreneurs access capital across ecosystems 

Today's episode explores three ideas that caught my attention:   

1. Clarity is kindness - Marcia highlighted how the most requested entrepreneur feedback is for angels to simply say "no" faster.  
2. Angel investing is still a mystery for many - It struck me how she still encounters people unaware they can participate in angel investing. There exists a massive pool of "latent” angels.  
3. The golden gut - 30 years of industry experience can serve as a very effective "BS detector." Angel groups with diverse expertise can perform fantastic due diligence. 

I explore these ideas and more with Marcia Dawood, Host of the Angel Next Door Podcast and the Chair Emeritus of the ACA. She is also a partner with Mindshift Capital and author of the award-winning book "Do Good While Doing Well." Her work advocating for entrepreneurship in DC and leading the Growing Women's Capital syndication initiative exemplifies her commitment to making early-stage investing more accessible and effective for both investors and founders. 

During our conversation, Marcia shares: 

• Insights on angel investing during market downturns that help investors avoid making reactionary decisions based on public market volatility. 
• Her approach to podcast content strategy that shows how thoughtfully organized episodes can better educate both investors and entrepreneurs on complex investment concepts. 
• The story behind her award-winning book "Do Good While Doing Well" that offers a roadmap to avoid common mistakes she made as a new angel investor. 

Connect with Marcia 

LinkedIn | Instagram | YouTube

Stuff We Reference 

• Kevin Learned
• The Angel Next Door Podcast

About the ACA

The Angel Capital Association is the largest professional organization for angel investors, representing 15,000+ members across 250 groups who collectively invest over $650M annually in startups.

Want more? 

• Get essential angel intel straight to your inbox every week with The Diligent Observer Newsletter. 
• Check out the entire show library and follow via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

All opinions are personal and may not reflect the views of The Diligent Observer. Not investment advice. 

Transcript

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Marcia Dawood: [00:00:00] Yes, it's a risky asset class, but there's ways to de-risk that. 

I just want it to be easier for entrepreneurs to fundraise.

Just be able to say no if the answer's no. 

Angel investing isn't a trending topic.

Anytime there's volatility of any kind, it just makes people nervous. 

He would text me that like, after an episode was released and he'd give me feedback. I was like, I love you. It was so good. 

So now they've got like two and a half lives that they're trying to live at the same time. And it's just, it's too much. 

Why would somebody pick up a book about angel investing if they didn't even know what angel investing was? 

Andrew Kazlow: My guest today is Marcia Dawood, Chair Emeritus of the Angel Capital Association, author of the award-winning book "Do Good While Doing Well", and host of the Angel Next Door Podcast. In this special joint episode recorded live at the ACA Summit in Denver. Marcia and I have a candid conversation about our podcasting journeys.

Marcia explores my work with angel networks, our newsletter highlighting angel network investment activity. And how we're helping angels see what most miss and [00:01:00] I get to learn about Marcia's advocacy work in Washington, her approach to using philanthropic capital for for-profit ventures and her journey

building the angel next door to over 125 episodes. I hope you enjoy learning from our conversation as much as I did. One quick note before we jump in. If you're an angel investor or thinking about becoming one, you need to know about the Angel Capital Association. The ACA is an incredible community for connecting with experienced investors, tapping into tons of well-documented best practices and training resources, and just generally keeping up to speed with what's happening in the angel space.

Now I've really enjoyed getting connected over the last few years and that's why I'm so excited to partner with the ACA to bring you this special series of episodes live from their annual summit in Denver. If you're serious about angel investing, you will definitely want to check them out. 

Welcome to a joint episode between The Diligent Observer Podcast and [00:02:00] The Angel Next Door Podcast with Marcia Dawood. We are here today live from Denver, Colorado at the Angel Capital Association Annual Summit. And I'm just thrilled to be able to sit down with you today. 

Marcia, welcome. 

Marcia Dawood: Thank you. Thank you.

Welcome to you too, since this is a joint episode. So, if you see like my friends will walk by and then we'll have to wave to them, but that's why we're doing this live. It's fun, you know? 

Andrew Kazlow: Yes. We are here in the middle of the action. There may be some noise in the background 

Marcia Dawood: And we're about to break for, uh, talking to the companies and the happy hour will begin.

So, you know people will be out here 'cause they're, we're standing between them and, uh, alcohol. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yes. Yes. And this is at the very beginning of the event. So we officially kicked off the event about an hour, hour and a half ago. Just wrapped up a couple keynote sessions to kick off our day. And so we've got three days of angel investing goodness. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. Amazing content. Content for everything from new angels to [00:03:00] advanced, uh, seasoned angels and everything in between. 

Andrew Kazlow: Indeed and you are a key part of making all that happen. Marcia, tell us just a little bit about your role with the ACA and the work that you do here. Because I'm a fresh participant, this is my second ACA and I'm thrilled to be here.

I think benefiting from a lot of work that you've put in over, over recent years. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, so the Angel Capital Association is a professional society of angel investors. Here in the US we have about 15,000 members, and I am on the board of the organization. I've been on the board for. Believe it or not, 10 years.

I think I'm the longest tenure board member. My tenure is about to end. We had to extend my term because I was the chair for a while, back in 2021 to 2023. But really we're here to bring angels together so that we can learn from each other, we can network, we can syndicate deals, and we can do all kinds of things that we can do as an association.

 That means everybody gets to [00:04:00] benefit. 

Andrew Kazlow: Well, uh, It's an honor to be here and there's just so much energy right now around angel investing. Marcia, I know you're also very involved in advocacy and working with public policy.

Can you just say a little bit more about the work that you do there? 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, so the Angel Capital Association, we are very involved in Washington DC. We have a lobby firm that work we work with in order to be advocates for entrepreneurs and for angel investors. So it's not just that we're advocating for better things for angels, although of course that's top of mind, but it's really about how do we get to see the innovation that we wanna see in the world and how do we help entrepreneurs. And so what that means is, uh, we do spend time in Washington DC going and meeting with members of Congress. I've actually had five members of Congress, US Congress members on the podcast before talking about how they feel about entrepreneurship and how it really does play a big part in our economy.

And we're really [00:05:00] trying to make sure that Congress is educated in our, all of our policy and decision makers are educated on what it means to have entrepreneurs really building, you know, the things that we wanna see in America and how can we make it easier for them. How can we make it easier for angels to wanna participate?

Because we've talked about it, it's a risky asset class, and it is something that you have to place a lot of bets in order to help the companies that will eventually succeed. 

Andrew Kazlow: Amazing. Well, I'd love to come back to that later. I have a lot more questions for you about how that works and what's happening right now.

 But I'm excited today. I think this is a unique opportunity for the two of us to just share a little bit more about our stories and how our podcasts and the work that we're creating on a regular basis for a unique audience, the angel investor. Just share that story, uh, in a way that we don't normally get to.

I've never interviewed someone else that runs an angel network, an angel investor focused [00:06:00] 

podcast before, so this is a really unique opportunity. 

Marcia Dawood: So you have to tell us first though, about The Diligent Observer 

and who you are. Okay? 

Andrew Kazlow: All right. Happy to do that. Uh, so, so you haven't 

Marcia Dawood: even said your name yet.

Hello, Andrew. Am I not? Tell everybody who you walk. 

Andrew Kazlow: Uh, apologies audience, listeners, I am Andrew Kazlow with The Diligent Observer. And this is a really a fairly recent evolution. So, our core business, we work with angel networks to help run operations. Running an angel group is really, really hard. And one of the things that we've learned over the last few years working with multiple investor communities is that angel groups aren't very good at marketing a lot of the times.

And so one of the things that's really difficult to do is find out about the deal flow that's happening around investor communities. And to resource these investor communities with great content. Your show being one, one shining exception to that. I mean, the content you put out has been tremendously to me in my journey, and I know to many others.

But we started The Diligent Observer just to help equip [00:07:00] investors to make better decisions. And that has evolved over the last year in particular, into a podcast which is focused on helping angels see what most miss through conversations with experts and folks that know something about their respective niche or areas of expertise.

And it's also evolved into a newsletter that's focused on highlighting angel network investment activity. If you were to go online, PitchBook or Crunchbase, any other deal activity tracking platform, and try to parse the most recent angel network investment activity. It's very difficult to do. And not a lot of people are aggregating that kind of information in one place.

And so we've started to do this through our newsletter, which works in conjunction with the podcast. We're a fairly young podcast. We've done about 36 episodes at this point, but 

Marcia Dawood: Hey, that's pretty good. You know, once you get past 10, you're in like the top 5% or something like that. 

Andrew Kazlow: Is it really that?

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. uh, there's very few podcasts that get past 10 episodes. 

Andrew Kazlow: Well, I get it. It's, uh, a lot [00:08:00] more work than anyone would ever imagine. 

Marcia Dawood: It's a labor of love for sure. How many sets do you have? 

Uh, we just crossed over 125. 

Andrew Kazlow: 125, wow! And how long have you been producing? 

Marcia Dawood: So I started the podcast really because I saw a need for, you know, there were a lot of podcasts out there talking about how did entrepreneurs grow their business and how did people do this and that when it came to building companies.

But I didn't see anywhere. I was like, well, who becomes an angel investor? And why would they do that? And I thought, well, maybe we should talk about that. So I just thought, well, I'm gonna start a podcast and I'm gonna just interview my friends basically, and ask them, hey, how'd you become an angel investor?

And why do you do it? And where'd you get the money? You know, those kind of things, and how do you think about it and why do you do it? And so we just started those conversations and at first I thought, well, once I did one or two episodes and I was like, well, this is a lot of work, I thought, well, I'll do it in seasons.

So I'll put out 10 episodes and then I'll put out another 10 episodes. And by the way, I see one of my biggest fans right there, Kevin Learned. He was literally my very first podcast listener. And then he would [00:09:00] text me after each episode released. 'cause you know, at the beginning you hardly have any listeners, right?

And he would text me that like, after an episode was released and he'd give me feedback. I was like, I love you. It was so good. But yeah, so I started it in seasons and I would 

Andrew Kazlow: Sidebar. Listeners, if you're hearing this and you go, oh, I have some feedback that might be useful for them, send it over because send it over.

I guarantee you, both of us still read that no matter how many listeners we have, totally. Amazing. Amazing. Sorry. Continue. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, so 10 episodes at a time was fine, and then I do another season in the fall. And so I did that for like, the first year and a half, but then I realized, I would lose all, like any time in between when you're not releasing episodes, your audience is kind of like, well, I don't know.

I'm not talking and I'm not hearing from you. I don't, I just forgot about you, basically. And then you fall down all the way down at the bottom of podcast list of what they're, I've listened to before or before a while. So then I thought, okay, if I'm gonna really commit to this, I need to do a weekly podcast.

And [00:10:00] so in September of 2023, so about a year and a half ago, a little over that, I started doing it weekly. And I'm like, I'm gonna commit and see what happens. And it really has picked up. And it's interesting, because I feel like sometimes the content that I'm putting out is really interesting when it comes to, of course I think it's interesting, but, no, but it's interesting in like one aspect, like for example, I had somebody come on and talk about AI, but in a way that was like, how do we as humans feel about using AI? And it could be anything from going to pick up our groceries to having them care for our child. So very different tasks, but how do people feel about it? And not just how do people feel about it, but how do people feel about it by generation? So it was like, how did the millennials feel about it versus the boomers versus the X-ers and the Zs?

I mean, it was really, really fascinating. But when you're putting out content every week or when you're putting it out pretty [00:11:00] regularly, sometimes people can miss an episode like that. So in a lot of cases I'm, I'll occasionally do episodes that are like, in case you missed it, and it might be, I find like five to seven minute episodes sometimes are nice because then you're not having to listen to like a whole long episode and you can get great little pieces of information. I just told you about that episode, which is really cool. If you go to my website, you can actually look at her data of what she collected and I mean it's just like super fascinating stuff. So what I find though, doing it weekly is you just have to,

you really have to be putting out content that is relevant and sometimes in a way that makes sense to the listener. Like so, sometimes I'll put out like three episodes in a row that are related to some to each other, so that then they're like, okay, I understand what you're talking about now. And I'm not like bing banging, bing all over the place.

And the listener's like, okay, wait a minute. Last week you were talking about this one aspect of angel investing. Now you're talking about something completely different. And so, you know, you keep people on their toes, but at the same time you give 'em a lot that they can really digest. 

Andrew Kazlow: Have you had the [00:12:00] experience of someone coming up to you and being like, Hey, at minute 27 in that one episode, you said this thing, and that was amazing.

Has that happened to you? 

Marcia Dawood: I've had people reach out to me on LinkedIn that, I kind of knew I was getting somewhere when I had people reach out that I didn't know. Mm-hmm. You know, uh, or, or they were like one person removed from me. Like, I didn't know them personally because at first it was like all my friends listen, and all the people from the ACA would listen, and that was about it.

 But then when you're talking about things and you're getting guests on who are providing really relevant and helpful information, that's what I'm always going for. I'm like, okay, what is it that I can have the listener know or learn about that is something they don't know about already?

And how can that really help them? So for example, I'm a big advocate on using philanthropic money to invest in a for-profit company. And it's a concept that is not very commonly talked about. It is not something that people do regularly, but I [00:13:00] just decided, like I'm gonna keep talking about it and talking about it.

And so then on my podcast, on a page on my website, I actually had to put a playlists. 

Andrew Kazlow: Mm. 

Marcia Dawood: Because I would say to people, Hey, you wanna learn about this philanthropic capital thing? You should go listen to this episode and then listen to this episode, and they'd be like, I can't remember all the fun, right?

So I said, okay, I'll go ahead and I'll put playlists on the website. And that's been super helpful. But then sometimes I'll just be like, look, you don't wanna go and listen to like five different episodes to learn about it. So for example, I did an episode that was called "Using Philanthropic Capital, explained in seven minutes."

So then somebody could be like, oh, okay, she's gonna explain this to me in a super easy way that I can understand it, and it's only gonna be seven minutes long. Awesome. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yeah. They have a super specific problem to solve, and 

Marcia Dawood: That's right. 

Andrew Kazlow: You make it very easy for them to solve said problem. 

Marcia Dawood: That's right.

Andrew Kazlow: I love it. So you're actually building journeys, like experiences [00:14:00] for a listener to engage. You know, now you've got a library of a hundred and something episodes. 

Marcia Dawood: That's right. 

Andrew Kazlow: You're like, okay, if you're interested in this, here's the storyline for you to walk through. Mm. I might have to start, start that.

Marcia Dawood: And the other 

thing that I find is really helpful is, you know, at the end of the day, yes, I want more people to be angel investors. And yes, I would love it if all of us made gazillions of dollars. That would be wonderful. Right? But the number one thing that I think I probably don't talk about enough is I just want it to be easier for entrepreneurs to fundraise.

Andrew Kazlow: Hmm. 

Marcia Dawood: It is so hard. No matter who you are, no matter what you look like, it is increasingly hard and harder and harder. And the last three years have been terrible to fundraise, so how do we make it easier? So not only has the podcast become something to help investors learn, but I'm trying to educate entrepreneurs too because I wanna be able to say, Hey,

here's something, have you thought about this? Like maybe you don't wanna go to angels right [00:15:00] away to try to fundraise. Maybe you wanna try equity crowdfunding first. And so I try to highlight and showcase people, like, for example, I've had two entrepreneurs on that have raised over $750,000 using equity crowdfunding.

Before they went to angels or even during their journey or whatever the story was. So all of those things are really, I think, helpful so that entrepreneurs can make a decision about their fundraising journey before they actually go out and make a bunch of mistakes or waste a lot of time, or in the worst case scenario, give away too much equity in their company while they're trying to fundraise.

Andrew Kazlow: I love that multi-pronged approach of like there's so much benefit. Like one podcast episode can inform and educate so many people, including yourself. I think one of the things 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, totally. 

Andrew Kazlow: I have come to really love about running The Diligent Observer has been the opportunity to sit down with people that have expertise and be able to draw that out in a really unique way, like,

just an example, we recently did a deep [00:16:00] dive on nuclear energy. 

Marcia Dawood: Wow.

Andrew Kazlow: And what it looked like to angel invest in nuclear energy. So I had six different guests from all walks of the nuclear energy space sit down with me for 45 minutes to an hour and just share their expertise. And so I think one of the things I have built some conviction around is I think everybody should start a podcast, whether anyone listens to it or not, just because

of the personal learning that has come and the relationships like getting to meet people like you and just to be able to give back in a way that is really distinctive. You can learn from them and then create something that they can then take and share with their friends and, you know, include on their portfolio.

 I think creating something out of what is really natural for a lot of us, which is just sitting down having a conversation that has just made this mechanism so fascinating and fun and valuable for me personally, and I think for a lot of other podcasters. Though if you had [00:17:00] any reactions to that concept, but.

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, no, it's, it's true.

'cause I mean, I learn something all the time just talking to the people that I interview or even deciding like who I'm gonna have on the podcast and why. I get asked a lot now that I've had the podcast for over three years, almost four years now. And I get asked by people, they email me a lot of times I don't know them, and they'll be like, Hey. And sometimes it's an assistant who doesn't do a very good job of pitching the person either, but you know, they'll be like, Hey, can this person come? But I'm really picky because 

A. I love having entrepreneurs on, if they have a real story to tell about a fundraising experience that they had, that's gonna help educate, not just entrepreneurs, but investors.

I don't let entrepreneurs come on to pitch because while I'd love to do that's a whole other podcast. That's not what my podcast is about. So I really wanna make sure that I'm being true to what the mission is. And I think that entrepreneurs appreciate that. And when I do bring an entrepreneur on and I [00:18:00] have had a couple, it's

because they have a very, very specific story to tell. I love having them come on and tell success stories after they've fundraised about how, what happened, how did it happen? What were some of the challenges? How can you overcome them? And then the one question I, you know, always try to ask is, what is it that angels can do better to help you as an entrepreneur?

Help us be better to you. Again, so that we can start to close that gap of fundraising. You know, when entrepreneurs go to fundraise, it is another full-time job. It's not, they are trying to build a company, which is a full-time job. They usually have a family, or you know, at least some level of a personal life, you hope.

And then they're trying to fundraise at the same time. So now they've got like two and a half lives that they're trying to live at the same time. And it's just, it's too much. Yeah. Right. So how can we help 'em and how can that be better, and that's really what I hope the podcast will accomplish.

Andrew Kazlow: What have been some of your favorite answers to that question? I have to ask? 

Marcia Dawood: So in [00:19:00] a lot of cases, the biggest one I hear over and over and over again is be able, if you're an angel or a potential investor, just be able to say no if the answer's no. 

Andrew Kazlow: Mm-hmm. 

Marcia Dawood: If you already know that you're not interested in investing, you don't have the money right now, whatever the story is, just be honest, get to that "no" faster so that then the entrepreneurs aren't wasting all their time and they're not like waiting around and then they're like trying to follow up and then they're spending a lot of time where they could be doing something else and talking to other people. 

Andrew Kazlow: Clarity is kindness.

Marcia Dawood: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Kazlow: Everybody listening, clarity is kindness. 

Clarity is kindness. Any other good answers to that? Or maybe unexpected answers? 

Marcia Dawood: Well, I think in a lot of cases, you find that entrepreneurs are, they're trying to do so many things at the same time, and in some cases they're in an industry that is really challenging as well.

So, for example, women's health is [00:20:00] something I talk about a lot. And there are things that in some cases when we're talking about women's health, you can't really say without having some level of either censorship or people think that you're talking about something that you're not really talking. you, You're talking about health, but it sounds like you're talking about something else that's, you know, not so clean.

 Then what do you do? Now you've got a whole other uphill battle to go against. So in a lot of those cases, I'm trying to get entrepreneurs to say, well, how can you get around that? How can you make sure that what is coming across is truly what you're talking about?

And it doesn't get censored for the wrong reasons. And in a lot of cases, algorithms are just meant to sensor because that's their job, while that's fine. We need to then educate on how we can make sure that the real story that needs to be told gets told.

Andrew Kazlow: Great nuggets. 

Marcia Dawood: So what are some of the things from your podcast that you've learned so far? 'cause 36 episodes is nothing to sneeze at. What were some of the takeaways that you've had? 

Andrew Kazlow: Yeah. Wow. So many. I think one of the [00:21:00] biggest themes that has emerged from conversation after conversation after conversation that I think was particularly well captured in a conversation I had with Paul O'Brien.

He's very active in the Austin area. But I left that conversation having words to a theme that I saw across dozens of the calls that I had. And that is that many angel investors should not be angel investors. They're far better suited to be LPs in a fund because to be an angel investor is, yes, to invest capital, but it is also to invest time, energy, value add to help, 

Marcia Dawood: yeah

Andrew Kazlow: to support, to create a better company than was there before your dollars entered. 

A conversation I had with Mitra Miller, who's with the Houston Angel Network, highlighted how smart money, the concept of being smart money versus dumb money 

Marcia Dawood: mm-hmm. 

Andrew Kazlow: Is so important. Smart money being, you know, money that [00:22:00] knows something and can add value beyond the dollars versus dumb money, which is just passive participation.

And so I think this theme that has emerged is just that it's very important to be prepared and capable of contributing to the overall success of a business. With capital, yes, but also with time, energy, and attention to be a truly effective angel investor. A lot of other opportunities, a lot of other ways to get involved in the early stage ecosystem, but to be excellent to truly move the needle is to come alongside an entrepreneur and provide not just capital, but also all of these other things alongside it.

So that's one big theme. Another that comes to mind is just the value of experience and the gut. We talk a lot about gut versus kind of analytical investing at ACA and even beyond. And I think one of the things that has been interesting for me to realize is that when [00:23:00] someone has three decades of experience in an industry,

their gut is gold. That experience is so, so valuable. And so a 30-year veteran in oil and gas drilling equipment production can tell within 10 seconds of meeting an entrepreneur, hearing their pitch in that space, whether or not what they're doing is well researched, is well connected, is viable or not.

And this is one of the key things that makes angel groups and communities so valuable, is the access to a dozen or two dozen or a hundred people that have these decades of experience. And that's just a hugely valuable resource. And so yes, angel investors don't often have the capacity to run institutional level due diligence and analysis.

But when you put a few together and you have one or two that have hyper specialized expertise, [00:24:00] that provides some of the most thoughtful, and trustworthy BS detectors 

Marcia Dawood: mm-hmm. 

Andrew Kazlow: In the world. And so I just get excited to meet investors that have this depth of experience and to recommend to entrepreneurs that they find investors who can add value with that level of expertise.

Because these investors are oftentimes later in their career, they don't have the capacity to start another thing themselves, but they're very eager to transfer what they have learned and to help cultivate the next generation of entrepreneurs. That's two of the themes that come to mind as I think about core lessons.

And also running a podcast is hard and Yeah. 

Marcia Dawood: Right. 

Andrew Kazlow: It's a lot more work than you think. 

Marcia Dawood: That's right. 

Andrew Kazlow: On that point, one of the things I'm curious and I think will be interesting for our audience is like, what's one thing about running the podcast that has been unexpectedly difficult that you've had to work through over the last few years.

I know you've got some listeners that have been with you [00:25:00] for four years now, 

Marcia Dawood: Right 

Andrew Kazlow: So they know you pretty well, but like, what's something that maybe most people don't know that's a lot of work or that's surprisingly difficult about running this? 

Marcia Dawood: Well, you know, AI wasn't around when I started the podcast, and so I do use a very specific AI tool for, helping to at least do the transcript, which is called Castmagic, and it will transcribe the entire episode and then it will help you pick out, like what is it that you, I've kind of taught it, which is what obviously you can do with AI, you know, this is what I want the show notes to look like. This is what I wanna make sure that the listener gets out of, if they go and look at the synopsis real quick, that it's short, but it tells them what it's about and if they would wanna spend the time listening to it.

And so before that though, I used to have to either listen. Remember all of it, or have somebody else listen to it or listen to it myself [00:26:00] again, so that I could go through and make sure that I captured all of the things that I wanted to capture on the show notes. Now, I can do that in a matter of minutes as opposed to hours.

And so that has been super helpful. The other thing that absolutely drives me crazy about podcasts is if you're in the car and you're listening to a podcast and you have to turn the volume up to hear the guest and down to hear the host, because the host's microphone is typically much better than the guest.

And so. What I've done is I have somebody that helps me with the sound. I have a good microphone obviously, but I haven't graduated to any big fancy podcasting sites, which they're out there and they're great, and I know a lot of people use 'em, but I find that Zoom just really works the best and it will help the guests feel more comfortable too, because in a lot of cases, if you have somebody who's [00:27:00] not a regular podcast guest, which most people aren't, that you're asking to be on your podcast, then you need to make them feel comfortable with the technology that they're okay with and their computer can handle.

 They're used to zoom now before, even before Covid, we weren't as used to it, right? But now everybody's kind of used to using Zoom at least, or they could use Google Meets or something like that. But I find that Zoom does its job. 

Andrew Kazlow: I completely agree with both of those.

I haven't even, AI's been around since I started the show, so it's always been a part of our workflow. 

Marcia Dawood: It was really hard before, like 

Andrew Kazlow: it sounds terrible 

Marcia Dawood: very time consuming. But even now, I mean, I still spend a lot of time just making sure that the transcript came out right. The spelling is pretty good.

You know, I mean, it's just, it's a lot. 

Andrew Kazlow: It's the little things.  Well hopefully this episode comes out with balanced audio. Both. I'll make microphone double check. We're probably good. That's, 

and we're recording on two separate tracks. Seems doesn't do that. Yeah, I mean it can, but I don't even worry about that so much.

yeah, I think for me, two things are a lot more difficult than I thought that they would be. One is the actual editing process. I use a platform called Descript that, 

Marcia Dawood: So do I Yeah, I use Descript. Yeah. 

Andrew Kazlow: Makes it a lot [00:28:00] easier, but it still takes a lot of work to manually go through. There is an AI button that will just, you know, auto edit the whole thing, but, and it's a great pitch, right?

It's a great pitch. It's nice if it works, but if you're detailed and getting all the pieces right. Making sure that the transitions are clean. It doesn't do a great job of, and so I have to manually run through and do all that. That takes a lot of time. The first dozen or so episodes, I did that myself.

Now we have a team helping me with that. But that's one area that I just had no appreciation for how difficult it was and how time consuming it was. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, no, I think Descript does a really good job though, of like 

Andrew Kazlow: It does, it does. 

Marcia Dawood: Um, if you wanna edit out a line, I mean, I do put my videos up now on YouTube, which I didn't do for the first like 40 episodes.

And then I switched over and started recording with video. I was like one of those, like, okay, I twist my arm, you know, kind of adopters. But, you know, people will watch on YouTube and even [00:29:00] if you do something and you just have the squiggly line and they have a picture for a little while. Mm-hmm.

Like they, you know, they're still gonna watch it. But no, I now do the whole thing. But I do find that Descript is good for removing filler words. 

Andrew Kazlow: Mm-hmm. 

Marcia Dawood: And it, they do make it more seamless, but you can't tell Descript, Hey, we were talking about something and I want to cut out the one line that we said, or we said something and then we flu up the line.

Andrew Kazlow: Right 

Marcia Dawood: you can't tell. Like, you literally, to your point, it is time consuming. I'm always making notes. Okay, at minute 17 you know this happened, so make sure to remember to take it out. Or something like that. Plus, I don't have any podcast episodes that have swear words in them, not one.

And I've been very careful about that. And so I've had people who've come on in it while we were recording. They said a swear word, and so I go out and take it out. 

Andrew Kazlow: The other thing that I think most people don't think about that has been. A lot of work, but I'm glad about is the guest preparation workflow about, you know, sending them what to expect and answering their questions and making sure the guest feels comfortable [00:30:00] because you and I, I mean, you've done hundreds of episodes, I'm working on it, 

Marcia Dawood: right.

Andrew Kazlow: But done a few. And so we can sit here and have a conversation and this feels great, 

Marcia Dawood: right. 

Andrew Kazlow: But for some people, very nervous. Oh my gosh, this is gonna go out to the whole world. And so getting guests comfortable. It's really important 'cause it draws out great content. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. 

Andrew Kazlow: And so the energy and time that we have had to put into that has been an unexpected lesson, but I think well worth it. And

Marcia Dawood: mm-hmm 

Andrew Kazlow: hopefully as both of our shows continue to grow. We get even more interesting guests on show. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. And the more prepared you are with the guest and the more you've told them in advance, like, this is what I'm gonna ask you. For the most part, I feel like people, they know what they're, what you're bringing them on to talk about, right? 

So they're an expert in their area and usually they can just riff off their own area. But I always start by asking people, just tell us a little bit about your background. And then from there you just start asking them questions. And then they're like, oh, wait a minute. 30 minutes went by.

I had no idea. You know, 

Andrew Kazlow: that's exactly right. 

Marcia Dawood: Right. 

Andrew Kazlow: People love to talk about themselves and their work. 

Marcia Dawood: They do. I mean, [00:31:00] I really don't find that you have to you need to tell them what you're gonna talk about. Right. And but to give them, like, if I scripted out every exact question I was gonna ask a guest.

First of all, it'd be a total waste of time because by the time we actually got to recording, we would just be having a conversation like we're having right now. So, you know that script would be thrown out the window. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yep. Yep. 

Marcia Dawood: And so, you know, why waste anybody's time? 

Andrew Kazlow: That's good. Well, listeners, if you have questions for us about our production experience or what it's like running a angel investor-focused podcast, let us know.

We would love to answer them. 

Marcia, one thing I wanna ask about. I'm curious to hear your answer and is what are you excited about right now in the angel space? That could be either in your public policy work, with the ACA, what are some of the things that you're excited about right now?

And then, we'll probably share 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. 

Andrew Kazlow: Some similar excitement. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting time because, you know, 2020 and 2021, even though we were in the middle of this like really crazy pandemic, there was a lot of capital flowing. [00:32:00] There were exits happening, especially in 2021. It was just a really heyday.

But then 2022 hit and people heard me talk about this before, but between 2022 and really the end of 2024, let's just call it, it was very, very challenging. There was not a lot of capital flowing. Exits were not happening. Interest rates were high. People were nervous. Angels feel poor. 

Andrew Kazlow: Mm-hmm. 

Marcia Dawood: So what do they do?

They just kind of stop investing. So it's harder and harder and harder for entrepreneurs to raise money. Then beginning of 2025, things started to look maybe a little better. We've had a couple of exits. I personally had an exit that just got announced this morning, which was nice.

Andrew Kazlow: Oh, congratulations. 

Marcia Dawood: Mindshift Capital had an exit with a company called Little Thinking Minds, so that's really exciting. But then, you know, we've had a lot of volatility in the last couple of weeks due to the tariffs and things that are happening in our government. That makes people nervous.

Anytime there's volatility of any kind, it just makes people nervous. So when things were really crazy at the beginning of Covid, [00:33:00] people got nervous then. Then things, it seems like it was forever at the time. But didn't we think that March of 2020 lasted like 5,000 days or something?

It's crazy. Yeah. People were posting all over the internet. Oh my god. It's March 25,005th, you know, whatever day. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yep. 

Marcia Dawood: so it was crazy. But at the end of it, it was, it seemed like a long time, but really by like August, September things started to kind of normalize a little bit more.

So like, we don't really know what's gonna happen in the future, but as the exit market starts to come back and it will, everything's cyclical. It will come back. It might not be in this minute. And Dr. Ron Weissman was speaking earlier today at the summit and he basically was like, look, don't panic.

This isn't something that's gonna, you know, change overnight. Even 2025 might still be hard, right? We gotta bear with the times, but angel investing and private investing is not nearly as volatile as the public markets. And that's one thing that like you can go to sleep at night thinking to yourself, okay, is my angel [00:34:00] investment just going to go up and down and up and down, like the wind day to day.

No. So, you know, that's something that you can just kind of keep in the back of your mind. While I'm excited that there could be more exits on the horizon. I think that's something that we will eventually see. I just dunno exactly when that's gonna happen. You can never time this, but, um, 

Andrew Kazlow: This morning apparently.

Marcia Dawood: But then once you start to get that, those exits flowing, now you'll start to get more capital back into the marketplace and more people will start to invest. Because, like we talk about here at the Angel Capital Association, it's a risky asset class, so you only wanna use a certain amount of your investible capital in order to invest in something like angel investing because it's risky.

So we always say like, maybe 5%, 7% of your investible assets would you put into angel investing. You have to keep that in mind. Like, I know for me personally, that bucket is empty. Right. I gotta wait until there's money that comes back through exits to continue that cycle.

But, you know, that's something that makes angel [00:35:00] investing interesting. And we also had a keynote speaker here not too long ago who was just talking about, you know, there's a lot of failures and we just have to expect that. And that's something that's part of the game. So that, again, is why I just think we need to keep educating people.

That's why I wrote my book, because I really wanna make sure that we keep talking about like, Hey, yes, it's a risky asset class, but there's ways to de-risk that. 

Andrew Kazlow: Before we move on, tell us a little bit about your book. I don't think we've mentioned that on this podcast. Your listeners may be very familiar with it, but for my listeners this could be new.

Marcia Dawood: You know what, I'm not, I'm really not that good with talking about a bunch on my own podcast, isn't that terrible? Okay, so I wrote a book called Do Good While Doing Well because it's trying to demystify the whole angel investing process. Because there's books out there, not a ton of them, but there are books out there.

They're really good books that are about angel investing. But why would somebody pick up a book about angel investing if they didn't even know what angel investing was, or they had no idea why they would even wanna do it. So I thought, well, if we can [00:36:00] demystify this whole space, that would be great because now what we can do is get more people who would wanna get in the game and they can do it in a way that would be easier for them and maybe it would help them at, I really wrote it because I just didn't want people to be making the same kind of mistakes I made. I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning. I invested in things 'cause I was like, oh, I love that company. Cool. And then I'd see another company, oh, that's cool. And like I had absolutely no strategy whatsoever, which is not a really good way to do it.

And also I didn't really understand that whole like concept of you're gonna have failures. I thought, well, no, aren't you vetting so that everyone does really well, but that's not the game we're in. So the game is you have to keep placing the bets, and the bets are more easily placed when you're investing through a fund because you can have more shots on goal with a fund than you could if you were making direct investments.

So there's a lot of things and that's hard to explain. I mean, you can do it on a podcast 'cause you could have several [00:37:00] episodes about it, but to have it all in one place, I thought was simply that people shouldn't have. 

Andrew Kazlow: Amazing. And how long has your book been out now? 

Marcia Dawood: It came out in September of 2024.

Andrew Kazlow: Okay. So fairly recent. Uh, coming up on a year. 

Marcia Dawood: It's won six awards so far. Two of them I found out about this morning. 

Andrew Kazlow: This is a good day for you. 

Marcia Dawood: I know 

Andrew Kazlow: what a day 

Marcia Dawood: announced an exit this morning. We're at the Angel Capital Association Summit and my book won two awards and actually the audio book won an award this morning, so that was exciting.

Andrew Kazlow: No kidding. 

Marcia Dawood: Because I didn't, I never had the audio book went. 

Andrew Kazlow: Did you read it yourself? 

Marcia Dawood: I did. 

Andrew Kazlow: Wow. 

Marcia Dawood: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Kazlow: That's a lot of work. 

Marcia Dawood: I did. It was, but yeah, it was fun. 

Andrew Kazlow: Wow. Well, congratulations. Thank you. I have a celebrity with me today. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah. 

Andrew Kazlow: well, something I'm excited about right now, the energy around collaboration

right now across investor communities. I'm seeing a lot of excitement from the angel groups that we're working with [00:38:00] around just sharing and both sharing and receiving deal flow. This has always been a thing, right? Angel groups are always looking for more opportunities for great companies, great entrepreneurs to partner with.

I mean, he who hold holds the deal flow has the gold, right? Like that is what this is all about, is partnering with great entrepreneurs. But it just seems like to me over the last 12 months or so, there's a lot more energy around leveraging technology to share and connect and collaborate across what historically have been somewhat isolated investing ecosystems. A lot of communities that are very locally focused and are less concerned with investment activity outside of their area. And so it just seemed like there's a lot more energy around that recently. Initiatives like the ACA Syndication Network, other deal collaboration concepts.

The work that we're doing here at Diligent Observer newsletter to surface angel [00:39:00] network deal, activity, things like that. That's something I'm very excited about and eager to help because I think to something you mentioned earlier, the end goal for all of these angel community operators is yes, to have happy investors that are funding great companies, but at the end of the day is to see these companies succeed and be able to raise the capital that they need to go on and build something great. And so seeing more intentionality around this collaboration just makes me really excited because I think long term is gonna drive really meaningful flourishing for the ecosystem. 

Marcia Dawood: Yep. Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. 'cause that's, I mean, that's the whole idea is how do we build robust ecosystems in multiple places because there's entrepreneurship in every city and every town, but we need to surround them with the support so that they can build and grow the company.

Andrew Kazlow: Yep. Love it. 

Well, Marcia, any final thoughts for our listeners? 

Marcia Dawood: You did mention the ACA does have [00:40:00] some syndication groups. I happen to run the syndication group called Growing Women's Capital, which is another thing I don't think we've talked about much on the podcast before. So you're making me talk about all kinds of things about, 

Andrew Kazlow: that's what we're here for today, 

Marcia Dawood: know about. So growing women's capital is basically a collection of ACA members and member groups who have an interest in investing in women-led companies. And when we say women-led, it doesn't mean all women, it means mixed teams. Yeah. Diversity and we showcase three companies a month and we have them come and pitch on a virtual Zoom call and all of the groups and angels that want to participate can see these companies, and that is an excellent way of being able to syndicate deal flow. And it's also a great way for entrepreneurs to be able to pitch to sometimes 20 companies or 20 angel groups or 20 individuals all at the same time.

Saves time. I'm back to [00:41:00] all about how do you save the entrepreneur some time. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yes. 

Marcia Dawood: Make it more efficient. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yeah, I love it. Well, we are excited to be here at ACA. We've got a couple more days of conversations to be had. We'll have several more guests following this one, but excited to have kicked off the live conversations with you Marcia.

 Thrilled to have the chance to connect and I look forward to continuing to collaborate 

in future. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, and thanks for all you're doing with The Diligent Observer. We need more people talking about this. I'm really happy that you're participating. I feel like sometimes angel investing isn't a trending topic.

There are a lot of things right now that are trending topics. Angel investing isn't really one of 'em. I talk to people and they say to me, well, oh, angel investing. I had no idea that I could even do that. And I'd be like. Well, you can, and now it's as easy as, you know, you can do it on an equity crowdfunding platform for as little as like a hundred dollars.

Um, and they're [00:42:00] like, huh. But they, it, it isn't like they didn't wanna do it. They just had no idea that they, it was accessible to them. 

Andrew Kazlow: Yeah. 

Marcia Dawood: But. If I'm the only one you know that they hear it from, because it isn't something that you hear regularly then, but that the more people that are talking about it, the more we'll start to change that, so.

Andrew Kazlow: and doing it well, right? Which is something you and I are both passionate about is equipping angels to make smarter decisions to invest wisely. Yes, this is high risk, but that doesn't mean we have to be stupid in the way that we're allocating our dollars. 

Marcia Dawood: Absolutely. 

Andrew Kazlow: There's a tremendous amount of science and strategy that can and should be leveraged when making these decisions.

And if somebody listens to your entire library and my entire library, they should be in pretty good shape. 

Marcia Dawood: Yeah, totally. 

Andrew Kazlow: At least that's the hope. 

Marcia Dawood: That is the hope. Well, thanks Andrew. 

Andrew Kazlow: Likewise. Enjoyed this a lot. We'll talk again soon. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Diligent Observer. I'm your host, Andrew, and if you're an angel investor looking for essential angel intel in five minutes every week, I think you'd [00:43:00] enjoy my newsletter. I send my best stuff, interesting deals, and more straight to your inbox so you never miss a thing.

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