This is an excerpt from a column posted at BizOpinion.
Angel and venture capital investing in Wisconsin has many faces. They range from sophisticated fund managers, inside the state and out, who handle multi-million-dollar deals to the casual investor who may join a hometown angel network and take part in one five-digit deal a year.
One of the most familiar and humble faces belongs to George Mosher.
Mosher, who was inducted Nov. 4 into the Wisconsin Investor Hall of Fame, was an angel investor when very few people even knew the term. He’s made 150 investments over time and remains remarkably active today – investing in about 20 deals in the past year. Mosher is also a wellspring of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to early stage investments.
Speaking to fellow investors on the eve of the Wisconsin Early Stage Symposium, Mosher said one of the biggest lessons he learned over the years should have been self-evident to him from the start: Angel investing is harder than he thought it would be.
“We all know it’s fun to talk about the successes,” Mosher told a crowd of investors during a pre-conference meeting in Madison. He quickly added, however, that failures often teach investors and entrepreneurs alike a lot more.
