In my work as an executive coach, I see how often we hear ideas that interest us but we stop, thinking “that would be too hard” or “it’s not for people like me.” Angel investing is one of those ideas for me, but I’ve found that today’s “angels” aren’t all Silicon Valley bros. In fact, they may be right next door.
Recently, I had the chance to chat with angel investor and podcaster Marcia Dawood, host of the podcast “The Angel Next Door” and whose latest book, “Doing Good While Doing Well” breaks down the world of angel investing and makes it more accessible, particularly for those who may not have considered it before. As Marcia says, there are many ways to do good while doing well.
You work hard for your money, so it’s worth it to stop and think every so often about what you’re doing with it–and how it makes a difference. Marcia has ideas that go beyond charitable donations that are well worth considering–and some may surprise you.
Enjoy our conversation:
Note: we’ve shared this as information only, not financial advice. Please consult your own financial advisers (and feel free to share this interview with them, too.)
Get Marcia’s book here.
Listen to The Angel Next Door podcast here.
Watch her TedX talk, Do Good While Doing Well, here.
Visit her website for more resources here.
AI-generated transcript:
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: Red Cape Revolution today, I am here with my friend Marcia Dawood who is the author of “Do Good While Doing Well.” It has been a privilege to get to know Marcia. She is an angel investor, a TED X speaker, and somebody who has been a source for me learning about what this world of angel investing and doing well, while you can do good for yourself too is about. Welcome Marcia.
Marcia Dawood: Thank you.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: When people think about investing, they either think about Shark Tank, and think, “I’m not Mark Cuban, I’m not going to give you a million dollars for 20% of your company,” or they think this is out of reach. I would love to hear about what your work is about, how you got started in it and how to make angel investing more accessible for more people, people like me, people like our audience watching today.
Marcia Dawood: I didn’t know anything about angel investing in 2012 when I was first invited to an angel investing group meeting. I remember saying, “What’s that?” I came to find out entrepreneurs are in every city, in every town, working on incredible innovations. I had been working in corporate America for a long time, doing the same thing and expecting different results mentality, going to the same meetings and thinking, “What is going on here?” Then I had my eyes open to this amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem that exists pretty much all over the world. I thought, “Where have I been? This is fascinating.”
I love hearing about what people are working on, things I would have never thought about, things that are actually helping our planet, helping to cure diseases or treat diseases. I thought, “How could I be a part of this?” I don’t have a finance degree, I’m not Mark Cuban. I don’t have millions of dollars to put into this. How could this be for me?
I came to find out angel investors are people who help these early-stage companies to grow and scale. The whole idea is they scale so they can either get acquired by a bigger company, or in some cases, they’ll go public. The whole idea is to get the product to market, or get their situation with their product or technology out into the world. I thought this seemed inaccessible, just for the rich, just for the well-connected. Over the years, it has changed, and now people can get involved for as little as $50 using equity crowdfunding. It isn’t talked about, and these new changes have only existed for a couple of years. These myths of being rich, having to be rich, having to be well connected still exist, and we aren’t talking about it enough. We have an awareness problem.
I started to get more interested in this from 2012 until about 2014. Women and people of color are getting a fraction of a fraction of the amount of money that’s out there to be used for innovation. I thought, “I can’t believe they only have a fraction of the good ideas. What’s going on here? Something’s wrong.” It turns out there aren’t enough people who look like them writing checks or in the investment seat making the decisions. I would talk to people, and they would say, “That’s interesting. I think I’d like to do that, but that’s not accessible for me. It seems daunting.” What I try to do in the book is demystify that.
The book isn’t about the ins and outs of angel investing from the standpoint of knowing all the terms and the lingo. I teach you that, but it’s more about the steps before that. Why would somebody want to do this? What’s the purpose? How does it help other people? How can you as one person make a difference? That’s been my mission, to demystify what this is about.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: Looking around my office here, every single thing was here, somebody had to create it, invent it, make the machine that made it, make the process that delivered it to the machine that made it. There are so many things that get developed out there. Every year it’s not just new hot technology. There’s business to business-type things and things that we may not see directly. You had a personal experience in thinking about healthcare, things that were affecting your own family. I know you talked about this on your TEDx talk, and we’ll have a link to that in the show notes on the blog page. Could you share about that journey for you?
Marcia Dawood: I came to discover how much innovation is happening in the healthcare system that we don’t know about. People think, “If I donate to the Cancer Society, then that money is going to be used to cure cancer.” In a lot of cases, that’s true, but the amount of money that goes to charities in the US every year is just a fraction of what is going on in the for-profit markets. If we put the burden on the Cancer Society in this example, that’s not fair. There are other inventions, other innovations happening that we could put our money behind in a different way to see those innovations happening.
My mother was diagnosed with ALS in 2016. It took our life in 2018. During that time, I knew of a company working on a treatment for Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS are similar diseases, neurodegenerative diseases. This was being worked on, and I thought, “I can be a part of this. I can be an investor and help bring this company along.” It was me and lots of other people, because it takes long, it’s expensive and quite a journey. That company went public in 2021 and they’ve moved the needle on things related to Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS. For me that was a feel-good.
This is one of the reasons why you would be an angel investor. You want to make a financial return. There’s data out there about investing in a diversified way, thinking about how to put your money to work, covering a lot of bases, that you can get a nice financial return over time. We all want a financial return, but that isn’t the only reason you’re becoming an angel investor. You’re doing it for different reasons. Could I be part of that change? Could I help create something that would mean other people wouldn’t have to suffer the way my mom did?
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: We’re sorry for your loss of your mom, but think about that your investment, and the collective investment of others may help someone else’s mom someday. To have that long game, to have that vision, that your money as an instrument to help that engine go and create the results for multiple people. For the inventors who put their heart and soul into that drug or product, whatever the result is, as well as the end state user, the patient, the family. It is fascinating how many different ideas are out there. A lot of the folks I work with at Red Cape Revolution are in busy corporate jobs, they’re not entrepreneurs. They’re not looking around their community going, “What else is going on?”
How does somebody who says, “I could invest a little bit, I’m getting an end-of-year bonus, or we have savings that we would either just donate or just put in the bank? I want to be doing something better. I see the need for people like me to step up and try to create more of a difference in our world, our country.” What is a busy corporate person – how do they get started on angel investing?
Marcia Dawood: There’s opportunity now where you can make an investment in a fund. I’m a huge fan of funds because you get immediate, diversified portfolio. You could make one investment, write one check, and you would have fund managers. Usually, there’s two or three fund managers that manage a fund, and they would pick the companies that are going to be invested in. It’s usually between eight and fifteen companies that get investment from that money that gets pulled together into a fund. It’s up to the fund managers to deploy the capital, to stick to whatever the investment thesis is, and whatever they’ve decided they’re going to focus on.
If you are a busy corporate person and don’t know where to start or how to do this or how to pick companies, you could find a fund that’s focused on – I always ask people first before they start to think about writing a check – think about the things you care about. Think about what it is where you’d like to see change in the world, then see what’s going on in your local community. That could be a five or ten-minute search online for entrepreneurs near me, or startup events happening near me. You’ll start to see if there’s an angel group around you. Angel groups do have funds, so you could participate that way.
In the book, I lay it out simply, there’s a one-page investment thesis. I call it a halo strategy that people can put together. In the workbook, there are exercises they can do. I encourage people to look around, find out what’s going on. Don’t think if you’re going to do this, it’s all about writing a check. Let’s find out what’s going on locally. Find somebody who could use your help – help could be one hour a month talking to somebody who’s an entrepreneur locally, who could use expertise or networking brainstorm, like “Who could I get in touch with who would help me grow my business?”
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: I love the concept of the halo strategy, thinking if my intention is to do good with my resources, whether money, time, or energy. That’s the bottom line – we all feel strapped for resources. Yet there are ideas and solutions bubbling up. If I want to not just sit here saying, “The world’s broken,” – what’s the Gandhi phrase? Your father had given you a plaque with the Gandhi phrase?
Marcia Dawood: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: During times of great transition turbulence, not just in the US, but the world, everyone’s going through lots of change. It is a way to do one of the things that I teach – how do you take back control? If you’re feeling, “How do I help something?” find somebody to help, find a situation and have that clarity around document it in the halo strategy, which you have in the book, as well as you have a workbook available online that helps someone go through it deeper.
If someone’s done that work, and they knows the areas – talk about the difference between donation and investing. A lot of people would think, especially since we’re recording this toward the end of the year, holidays are approaching, there are lots of great charities already doing work. There’s a tax write-off for that, even though most of us don’t fully understand, or maybe it doesn’t even apply to us because it’s not big enough. What is the difference in how those funds get used or make a difference long term?
Marcia Dawood: Women especially are comfortable with donations. We write checks to charities throughout the year, and at the end of the year, it becomes more prevalent. The word investing, to a lot of people, is scary. If I invest in something, that means I have to get a financial return, or I have to expect to get a financial return. If I don’t, I might be thought of as a bad investor, or I didn’t make a good decision. We donate money, we give that money away quite often – are we sure where that money went? Do you know when you give money to a charity what it’s being used for? Do you know what every dollar is being used for? Some people are conscientious about that and can go through and there’s transparency with 501(c)(3) charities, where they have to say what they’re using the money for. Do people really ask? I don’t know of a lot of people that do.
When it comes to investing, yes, you want to get a financial return, but when you’re investing in a private company, it is a riskier investment. It is something that is illiquid. If I wanted to buy a stock in Apple, one share of Apple stock, I could do that. I could buy a fraction of a share nowadays because it’s sophisticated, I could go on Robin Hood or E-trade and buy this share stock, then turn around two minutes later and sell it – totally liquid. But with a private company, when you’re making an investment, or investing in a fund, it could take 3, 5, 7, or sometimes even 10 years for you to see a return on your money.
At the Angel Capital Association, we talk about things in buckets. We say you don’t want to put more than five to 10% of your investable assets into alternatives. Alternatives would include things like art or real estate, things that aren’t traditional. Angel Investing falls into that category, jewelry, stuff you can’t turn over in a minute. Being conscious of what you want to do with that bucket of money, how you’re going to spread that out over time.
I got to a point where my bucket was empty because I had invested in things and I was waiting for a return with the not being liquid. I saw these other people who could potentially invest too, and I had all this information about how to do it. I’ve tried everything from investing in a fund, managing a fund, and investing through an angel group. I explain all this in the book, even the things you can do nowadays with equity crowdfunding, where you can invest just $100 or $200. It’s a great way to get your family involved.
My husband and my stepkids will sit down and talk about different companies, and we’ll decide. It’s a cool exercise you could do. You could do it as a mock exercise, you wouldn’t have to actually make a physical investment. There’s platforms out there for equity crowdfunding, and you could look through them, see what innovation is happening in the world. Talk to your kids about it, talk to your family, talk to your spouse. I’ve had great conversations with my stepkids I would have never had otherwise, if we hadn’t been talking about these entrepreneurial companies. It’s changed their mindset from the standpoint of some of the things they might want to do, it made them feel like there was more out there that wasn’t just “I have to go to college, I have to get a corporate job.” There were more opportunities.
That’s what I felt like when I was in corporate America too. If I had known all this stuff about entrepreneurship and angel investing when I was working in a corporate job, my mindset would been different, and how I would approach things. I would have stayed in my corporate job and I liked it, I would have thought about it differently.

Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: That’s interesting thinking for a team. This time of year, people say, “What can I get my team for the holidays? Should we be buying gifts? Should we be making donations?” The example you use with your stepkids and your husband is, being able to look at something collectively that expands our knowledge of things that are possible in the world. That’s what creativity is about – we see somebody doing something where they put things together in different ways that could give me ideas about what I could do. I could see that being something for a family, for a team, for a group of friends. Twenty people put in $5 but then pick one. When you use the term equity crowdfunding, are you talking about things we know as Kickstarter or Indiegogo or those considered equity crowdfunding?
Marcia Dawood: It’s considered crowdfunding. The sites you mentioned, IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, are rewards-based crowdfunding. That’s where you would buy something early, get access to something ahead of time, get to be on the inside before it actually gets manufactured. Then there’s donation-based crowdfunding. You might have heard of GoFundMe, if somebody is in trouble, or had some tragedy or something happen, and they want to pool money together to help a family or something. Equity crowdfunding is similar. You’re pooling your money together, but you get a small piece of ownership into the company.
There’s information on every one of these platforms about the companies you could potentially invest in. The SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission has set it up so there is transparency around the things that need to be disclosed on these platforms about each company up for investment. That’s why I like it as a starting point for people – they can see a lot of information. They can see the disclosures, videos, and financial statements, if they want to read them.
The best part about the platforms is the comment section, because any question any investor has has to go through the platform. Everybody gets to see the questions and the answers provided by the company right there. You can’t ask the company a question, even if you knew the founder, in email, because all the questions have to be transparent for any potential other investor to see. That’s a great way to learn, because you’ll see different kinds of companies, see the types of questions investors are asking. If somebody walks through one of those deals and looks at the company, they’re going to have questions, then they’re going to see that other people have the same questions, and they’re going to think, “This isn’t so hard. I could do this too.”
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: I know that you had some of the founders of those platforms on your podcast. You have a podcast called The Angel Next Door, where you’re talking not only about angel investing, crowdfunding, but also to entrepreneurs. On these platforms are there a few that you can share? This is not a recommendation, this is not financial advice. But as people are starting to explore this, where they can look around and places that you feel are well run and legitimate?
Marcia Dawood: Yes, to your point, I’m not a financial advisor, I’m not a wealth manager, I’m not giving advice. I’m telling people what’s out there. I’ve had all three of the main platforms. I’ve had somebody from all three on my podcast. WeFunder is one of the bigger platforms, and they do what’s called revenue-based financing, where you can start to get paid back sooner than you would in a normal angel investment. I’ve had the CEO of start engine on, and then most recently, I had the CEO of republic.com on, and he talks about democratizing the private markets. He said a very interesting statistic that blows my mind. He said about half of the people who come onto the site make an investment in less than a minute. That is fascinating because that isn’t enough time to read the big print. I guess maybe because they’re talking about risking $100 versus 100,000.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: That is interesting when you think about the rest of the online space, and the growth of things like online gambling and shopping habits, to feed that animal in a good way of investing in these companies who are following the rules, following SEC, the Securities Exchange Commission here in the US, which you happen to sit on a committee for this, correct?
Marcia Dawood: That’s right.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: So Marcia also has the inside scoop and being influencing here US, the national policies for being able to make this more accessible but still safe. Safe in a way of that any investment can be safe, you have to do your homework. Looking at these platforms and the fact that people are willing to invest, put some money in, whereas my concern sometimes with some of the more advertised brands or things that people are using on Facebook is how much of that money actually goes to the places that it needs to go, and what’s in fees? They’re all running for a profit too. If someone’s interested in exploring this more, maybe doing this with their family over the holidays, or setting a goal for the new year and saying, “We want to feel more in control. We want to feel like we’re helping somebody who wants to help the world an issue that we care about,” they can go to one of these platforms and explore and do their homework.
Marcia Dawood: I think it’s a great way to learn without having to invest anything. You can look and talk about it and make up your own questions. In the workbook, I have an exercise of making a mock portfolio, giving people an idea of what it would be like to build a portfolio off of one of these sites. You can pick whatever one you want, and there’s more out there you can Google, but those are the three that have the biggest market share right now.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: Part of the idea of angel investing has been shifting over the years, that it is not just the ultra wealthy, the extra cash laying around that it is another form of doing well socially, but also potentially getting benefits for yourself, not only financially, but also emotionally, feeling like you’re doing part. What is one thing that you would say to somebody who’s listening now, who’s questioning whether they’re the right person to step into this world?
Marcia Dawood: It is hard to build a company, and these entrepreneurs are working hard to bring their innovation to life and scale a company, but there are so many things that each person has a different skill set they could lend to an entrepreneurial company. I’ve talked to people before who have amazing backgrounds, and they’ll say, “I don’t have – I’m not an attorney, I’m not an IP lawyer, or I don’t have a finance background, so I can’t help an entrepreneurial company.” That’s not true. They need help in every single area – HR, marketing, sales, all the things. I encourage people – you could start helping companies, and it would be beneficial.
People don’t know about this – you can use philanthropic money to invest in a startup company. If you go to my website, I have playlists of the different podcast episodes, and one of the biggest ones people always ask me about is using philanthropic money. Women especially like this idea, because if you have money sitting in a donor advised fund, or you would like to put money into a donor-advised fund, or you would like to donate money and know that money is being used to help underrepresented founders, like women founders and people of color, then that money can go to them. As the donor in this particular type of investing would never get the money back in your bank account. You wouldn’t be able to go buy a yacht or anything with it, but if money came back, you would either be able to have more money to invest in more charities, or you could take it and invest in more for-profit companies until you eventually give it to a charity. It’s a concept. It’s a little complicated, we don’t talk about it a lot. It hasn’t been mainstream, but it’s becoming more popular.
I think it’s a great way, especially if people don’t have a lot of time and they’d like to do something like this. It’s a way to have a triple win, because you’re getting your tax donation, you’re doing something that you’re familiar with by donating money, but in the interim, you’re taking that money and you’re doing something else with it that could potentially be good, and that could mean you might have more money to come back that you could then give to charity. I think we just need to keep talking more about it so that people know. I think it’s a great way, especially for people who are in a corporate job, they don’t have a lot of time, but they have some extra money, and they know that this could be something that they’d really like to do.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: It sounds like a great conversation to have with your professional financial planner. You’re thinking about your estate, your aging parents and all that, especially some of us who may not have children, or have like, what are we doing with what we’re working for? And what are we making with it? I really recommend picking up the book. Marcia Daywood “Do Good While Doing Well.” Marcia, where can people find out more about you and your work?
Marcia Dawood: They can go to my website – it’s spelled out, MARCIADAWOOD.com, and there’s all kinds of information. You can get the first chapter and the introduction for free. You can download that for free. There’s lots of resources. You can download the halo strategy worksheet for free if you want to.
Darcy Eikenberg, PCC: The podcast is everywhere. It’s Angel Next Door, and we’ll have links in the show notes on the redcaperevolution.com blog. Marcia, thank you so much for being here and thank you for inspiring us all to do good and do well in our work, in our lives.
Marcia Dawood: Thanks for having me, Darcy.
Get Marcia’s book here.
Listen to The Angel Next Door podcast here.
Watch her TedX talk, Do Good While Doing Well, here.
Visit her website for more resources here.