For decades, people have wanted to get a glimpse inside the world of angel investing - it's exciting - and a little mysterious.
They're constantly seeing stories about this person or that person making an absolute fortune from some unknown startup suddenly becoming a household name, like Uber, Airbnb, Space X, or Bird scooters.
And when you look at all the money flooding into these deals - it's astounding.
Back in 1995, $8.1 billion was invested in startups.
In the early 2000s, you're looking at a little over $15 billion.
Now it's $99.5 billion.
And that's just in the United States.
You start adding in Europe and Asia, and you're over $204 billion.
But even with all of this buzz, a lot of folks still aren't exactly sure what it means to be an angel investor.
Or how to become one.
That's why we're here.
Today, we'll discuss angel investing 101.
We're going to talk about how much more lucrative it can be to back startups versus stocks.
And how easy it is to get started.
There are so many stories of people launching startups in their garages or basements that go on to become worth tens of billions of dollars.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage.
He had about 20 angel investors at the beginning.
If they held on to their shares, last year they would've each made $7 billion.
That's a return of 14,000,000%.
Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn out of his apartment.
His startup went from being worth roughly 10 million to $26.2 billion.
Pierre Omidyar launched eBay from his living room.
In 1997, eBay was worth $20 million.
By 1998, it was worth $21 billion.
That's 105,000% in a year.