Happy Thursday. The last two weeks have been a blast for me with conferences in Denver and Dallas - so fun to see many of you in person.
I’m still booking conferences for the fall - what’s one event you think I should put on the schedule? Reply and let me know!
In today’s issue:
Angel Deals of the Week | 176 Deals, 104 Networks
Bookmarks I think you’ll enjoy
Nuggets from my conversation with Carta’s Peter Walker at the ACA Summit last week
P.S. I’m actively hiring an A player Angel Operations Director for our service business. Know someone who would kill it running point on ops across multiple investor groups? Send them my way.
🔥 Angel Deals of the Week
Angel funding rounds announced in recent weeks, compiled from public sources or via direct announcement. These deals represent the elite few that survived an angel network’s vetting process. Note: I have not personally analyzed these companies and am sharing for informational purposes only.
📊 Angel Network Investment Tracker: 176 Deals, 104 Networks.
Klinrisk | AI tool predicting kidney disease progression
Participating Group: Cowtown Angels
Klinrisk is developing an AI-powered diagnostic tool that uses routine blood and urine lab tests to predict chronic kidney disease (CKD, a condition where the kidneys gradually lose function) progression up to five years in advance, according to the company. A third-party validation study by Boehringer Ingelheim and Carelon Research, using data from more than four million U.S. adults, found the model exceeded 80% accuracy. Klinrisk has secured partnerships with LifeLabs and Eli Lilly and recently received investment from Cowtown Angels.
Navdeep Tangri | Winnipeg, Canada | April 2026 | Source
RefloDx, Inc. | Patented ultrasound reflux diagnostic device
Participating Group: Park City Angels
RefloDx, Inc. is developing SondeFlux, a patented device that uses externally placed ultrasound transducers to non-invasively detect and characterize laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR), the backflow of stomach contents into the upper esophagus, during home-based 24-hour monitoring. A spinout from the University of Utah's Center for Medical Innovation, the company has received NSF SBIR Phase II funding and a Utah USTAR grant. Park City Angels recently announced an investment in the company.
Rudy Wilcox | Kaysville, UT | April 2026 | Source
iDentical | Drill-free 3D-printed dental implants
Participating Group: SideCar Angels
iDentical is developing a drill-free, patient-specific dental implant (an artificial tooth root 3D-printed to fit a patient's natural socket after extraction, requiring no drilling or complex surgery) for the implant dentistry market, which the company values at $13 billion globally. The device is currently in a clinical trial enrolling patients at the ADA Forsyth Institute in Boston. SideCar Angels recently invested in the company's Series A round.
Iris Wedeking | Walnut Creek, CA | April 2026 | Exclusive
📣 Have an Angel Deal to Announce?
🔖 Bookmarks
🏆 Anthropic Crosses $1T on Secondary Markets: Anthropic's valuation hit $1 trillion on Forge Global this week, surpassing OpenAI's $880B.
🤖 Functional AGI is Already Here: Thought piece from Pete Flint at NFX on why the behavioral shift to AI-first has already happened.
🌐 35% of the Internet is AI-Generated: Fascinating research from Stanford and the Internet Archive shows the web has gone from zero AI-generated sites to a third of all new sites in just three years.
🥇 The Nugget: My Top Takeaways from Peter Walker of Carta
Peter’s full interview will release in a few weeks, but this week I wanted to share some “teaser” nuggets because these points have been on my mind and I think you’ll find them interesting.
At pre-seed, who you are matters 10x more than what you do.
I spent about 2 hours with Peter Walker of Carta last week at the Summit of Angel Investing in Westminster, Colorado, and in our interview + in his keynote he said a few things that stuck with me on the topic of SAFE valuations. For context, Carta sees data from roughly 60,000+ venture-backed startups and 480,000+ signed safe notes:
“It is not the case that if you have more revenue, you necessarily get a higher valuation. In fact, some of the highest caps that we’ve seen are for products that are yet to be built. Zero revenue, they’re just ideas on a piece of paper. Who you are as the founder matters 10 times more than what your business is doing at this stage.”
This is really important to keep in mind when negotiating at the earliest stages. The “milestones” and benchmarks actually matter less the younger a company is, and the data really does suggest investors put far more weight when valuing the business on who the founding team is. The importance of the team is obviously front and center throughout the life of a startup, but it’s the most variable in early days when there is little/no traction.
The variation with these things is wild.
Also, as a somewhat amusing aside, he mentioned that the typical SAFE structure is a post-money with valuation cap only. Why? His theory: because that’s what YC posts on their website for easy download.
He also made this point, with which I 100% agree: always ask the founder to include a 20% discount. It guarantees an angel gets compensated for their early risk taking, whereas a post-money safe only introduces the possibility of conversion below the cap, resulting in an early investor receiving no benefit for investing early.
I do not understand why discounts are not included on more SAFEs. The discount is the only way to “guarantee” a benefit for investing early, whereas the cap is only of benefit when the next round’s valuation is greater than the cap. Angels, always ask for the discount.
Why should you ask for 20%? That’s what everyone uses.
Want more? Check out his full presentation here, and stay tuned for my interview with Peter in a few weeks.
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🛠️ We Run Angel Groups So You Can Lead Them
In case you didn't know: alongside The Diligent Observer, I run an outsourced operations service for angel networks. Screening, communications, newsletters, platform management, and more. The stuff that either isn't getting done or shouldn't be done by you.
We serve 4 groups today representing 200+ angels and $5M+ deployed last year. We're expanding and have space to serve 2 new groups in the fall.
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Until Next Week 👋
Thanks for reading - have a great week.
-Andrew
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