&gt; Never said real due diligence, just most of the due diligence that is actually done<p>Which in a lot of cases is zip, zilch, nada by professional standards. A few lunch conversations and &quot;social proof&quot; don&#x27;t constitute due diligence, but that passes for a lot of angels in Silicon Valley.<p>&gt; However, if one is investing in 1,000 startups then due diligence is actually of less importance as you approximate a normal distribution of returns..<p>The problem is that the &quot;normal distribution of returns&quot; could easily turn out to be very different from what you expected. Markets aren&#x27;t static. A lot of fund managers who rushed to buy boatloads of subprime MBS without doing their own due diligence learned this the hard way. They simply relied on the credit rating agencies and assumed everything would work out.<p>Here, you don&#x27;t even have credit rating agencies. You have a hodgepodge of individuals (&quot;syndicate leaders&quot;) who are black boxes. Just look at this[1]. According to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;syndicates" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;angel.co&#x2F;syndicates</a>, he has the fifth largest syndicate on AngelList.<p>Pure madness.<p>When it comes to investing, ignore these words of wisdom at your own peril: do your due diligence or eventually your due diligence will do you.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10036321" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10036321</a>