The serious angel mindset:

• Unlearn what the pitch circuit has taught you about what a fundable founder looks like.

• Back the business model and say no in the first meeting when the answer is no.

• Do the unit economics before the second call, not after the term sheet.

• Treat pattern recognition as a hypothesis to stress-test, not a shortcut to skip diligence.

You can't build a portfolio that returns a fund if you're optimizing for founders who are good at fundraising. That skill and the skill of building a company that compounds over a decade have almost no overlap.

I can assure you the overlap is smaller than you think.