How do I show angel, scout, operator, or SPV experience?

What each history actually evidences

Be precise about the claim each one supports. Allocators are, and a manager who blurs them loses the benefit of the strongest one.

• Angel investing. Your capital, your decision, usually small cheques and no ownership discipline. Evidences selection and conviction. Does not evidence portfolio construction, reserves, or the ability to hold a position through dilution.
• Scout allocation. Somebody else's capital, inside a defined mandate, often with the sponsoring firm holding the final decision. Evidences access and screening. The attribution question arrives immediately, so state who decided before being asked.
• Operator experience. Company building rather than investing. Evidences domain depth and founder credibility, and evidences nothing about selection until you attach deals you chose.
• Special purpose vehicles. One company per vehicle, capital raised deal by deal. Evidences sourcing, the ability to assemble capital, and conviction. Does not evidence portfolio-level judgment, because there is no portfolio, and the economics are not comparable to a fund's.

The evidence table: strong evidence, useful context, insufficient proof

Blueprint's own framework. Sort every item you intend to present into one of the three, and present the third column as context rather than as proof.

• Strong evidence: deals you decided on, with date, stage, cheque, your reasoning recorded at the time, and the outcome, including write-offs.
• Strong evidence: passes you recorded with reasoning, which is often more persuasive than the investments and which almost nobody produces.
• Strong evidence: founders who will describe how you behaved, especially from a company that failed.
• Strong evidence: a named, repeatable sourcing channel with a conversion history, which has its own page in this library.
• Useful context: aggregate multiples across a small sample, labelled with the sample size, the period, and how many positions are unrealized.
• Useful context: co-investors who will confirm you were in the deal and what you contributed to it.
• Useful context: operating outcomes at companies you helped build, framed as domain evidence rather than as investment evidence.
• Useful context: SPV deal terms and how the vehicle was assembled, which speaks to sourcing and to your ability to convince capital.
• Insufficient proof: an IRR computed across a handful of angel cheques and presented beside fund benchmarks.
• Insufficient proof: a logo wall with no role, date, or decision attached.
• Insufficient proof: paper marks from recent rounds presented as outcomes.
• Insufficient proof: a selection of winners with no statement of how many investments the sample contains.

Small samples, and how to be honest about them without apologising

A small sample is a fact rather than a weakness, and the failure mode is hiding it rather than having it. Two managers with nine investments each are distinguished entirely by whether they said nine.

Three disciplines make a small sample credible. State the denominator every time a percentage or a multiple appears, since a hit rate over nine investments is a different claim from the same rate over ninety. Separate realized from unrealized, because in a young sample most of the value is usually unrealized. And resist annualising: an IRR computed over a short holding period with few data points is arithmetically unstable and an experienced allocator will treat a confident one as a signal about the manager rather than about the record.

Marks, and the sentence that has to accompany them

Most non-traditional records are mostly unrealized, which makes valuation the load-bearing question rather than a footnote.

ILPA's performance template guidance is explicit that it does not define realized or unrealized, and instead requires funds to be clear and consistent in their own definitions and to provide disclosures surrounding methodology. For a pre-fund record that instruction is even more binding, because there is no auditor and no fund financial statement standing behind the number. So say what the mark is: a subsequent priced round, a safe or note conversion price, a secondary transaction, or your own estimate. The last of those is the one that needs the most explanation and the one most often presented with the least.

Where a valuation methodology is described, the international private equity and venture capital valuation guidelines are the reference most auditors and administrators work from, and pointing at the basis you used is more credible than asserting a number.

SPV economics, described precisely

SPV results are not fund results and the difference is structural rather than presentational.

• One asset per vehicle, so there is no offsetting: a fund's carry is calculated across a portfolio where losses net against gains, and per-deal carry is earned on each winner separately.
• No reserves, so the follow-on decision is a new fundraise rather than a portfolio decision.
• Fee and carry terms vary per vehicle, which means an aggregate return across several SPVs is a blend of different economics unless you say otherwise.
• Investors chose each deal, so the record evidences their selection alongside yours, which is a real qualification on a blind-pool claim.
• Where you present aggregate SPV performance, state how many vehicles, over what period, how many are realized, and whether the aggregate is weighted by size or by count, because those two produce different numbers from the same deals.

What may be shown in United States advertising, and what may not

The presentation constraints bite hardest on exactly this kind of record.

Under the codified United States marketing rule, gross performance may not appear without net shown with at least equal prominence, in a format designed to facilitate comparison, over the same period. Extracted performance, meaning results pulled from a larger portfolio, requires that the total portfolio's results be provided or promptly offered, which is directly relevant to a manager showing selected angel deals from a larger personal portfolio. Hypothetical performance, which includes any modelled or what-if figure, carries its own conditions.

The practical consequence: a selection of your best angel investments, shown without the rest of the portfolio they came from, is the pattern the extracted performance provision exists to address. Show the whole sample or state precisely what the sample is.

What limited partners are testing

Every question here is about whether the manager is a reliable narrator of their own record.

• Is the denominator stated, or does the reader have to ask?
• Are the losses in the record, or only the winners?
• Does the manager distinguish their decision from the sponsoring firm's, or from the co-investor who led?
• Are marks explained by basis, or asserted?
• Does the manager volunteer the limits of the sample before being pushed to?

What this evidence does not prove

It does not prove fund-level performance, and no framing converts it into that. What it can prove is that a person makes defensible decisions under uncertainty, which is the question a first-time manager is actually being asked.

It also does not prove portfolio construction ability. Selecting well one cheque at a time and building a portfolio with ownership, reserves, and pacing are different skills, and the second one is evidenced by the construction work rather than by the record.

This page is educational and general. It is not legal, tax, accounting, valuation, or investment advice, and any presentation of prior results should be reviewed by counsel in the jurisdictions where you market.