Happy Thursday.
This week, a grad student reached out asking for help with his research on angel investors. I was introduced to the angel investment world during my MBA experience, so I happily agreed. Join me in supporting a Master's thesis by taking this anonymous 3–5 minute survey on how cultural differences shape angel investment decisions - I’ll share the results once his research is live.
On to today’s issue:
Angel Deals of the Week | 221 Deals, 112 Networks
Bookmarks I think you’ll enjoy
The best nugget from my conversation with Patrick Sweeney of Elevate Ventures
🔥 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: 221 Deals, 112 Networks.
🔓 The Exclusive: 7 Actively Raising Deals Shared to Date (3 Added Last Week)
Overlord Labs, Inc. | battery intelligence chip platform
Participating Group: Band of Angels
Overlord Labs is developing GENESIS, a chip that manages and monitors device batteries for wearables, smart glasses and edge AI devices. The San Jose-based company is fabless, meaning it designs chips without owning a factory, and says its Silicon x Algorithm architecture embeds battery intelligence into the chip. Band of Angels led the round through its Hard Tech and Energy groups, alongside a syndicate of venture and angel investors. Former Texas Instruments executive Dave Heacock has joined the board.
Richard Nicholson | San Jose, CA | July 2026 | Source
ChargeMate | AI-powered support for EV charging
Participating Group: Georgetown Angel Investor Network
ChargeMate is developing an AI platform that helps electric vehicle drivers troubleshoot problems directly at public charging stations, aiming to ease charging anxiety and support broader EV adoption. According to the company, its charger-aware technology, which is patent-pending, resolves most driver issues without a human agent and has cut inbound support calls for charging network operators. ChargeMate recently secured investment from the Georgetown Angel Investor Network, whose backing will support the company's continued growth in the EV charging support market.
Bradford Crist | San Francisco, CA | July 2026 | Source
Integrated Reality Labs | Real-world tag and Assassin gaming app
Participating Group: Bridge Angel Investors
Integrated Reality Labs is developing SLAP, a mobile app that turns classic real-life games like tag and Assassin into large-scale multiplayer matches. The game runs on the company's patent-pending Gravity Engine, which fuses GPS, Bluetooth and other phone sensors (a low-latency tracking system) to detect player proximity in real time without extra hardware. The company says SLAP has reached the top 1 percent of mobile retention and has been played in over 200 countries. BRIDGE Angel Investors recently announced an investment.
Lauren Steidl | Portland, ME | June 2026 | Source
📣 Have an Angel Deal to Announce?
You just read who raised. The Exclusive tells you who's still raising.
Every week I contact the founders behind the deals I track here and ask one question: are you still raising? When the answer is yes, the deal goes into a private portal with the company’s deck, a memo, the terms, and how to reach the founder, often a week or more before it runs in this newsletter. 7 new deals posted in the two weeks since launch. Accredited investors only.
Claim one of just 25 founding seats: $50/month for as long as you stay, full refund within 30 days if you’re not finding it useful.
🔖 Bookmarks
📊 Peter Walker Leaves Carta: After five years of sharing private markets data at Carta, Peter is joining OpenRouter. ICYMI, here’s the podcast he and I did earlier this year.
📈 U.S. vs. EU, Two Decades of Data: Visual Capitalist charts GDP from 2006-2026, showing the EU fell from 131% of U.S. output to 71%.
💸 The Concentration Story Continues: AI funding hit a record $407B in H1 2026. OpenAI and Anthropic took half.
🥇 The Nugget: My Top Takeaway from A Conversation with Patrick Sweeney
All else is rarely equal ⚖️
Based on his research, founder traits such as being an immigrant founder, a successful serial entrepreneur, and a grad from elite engineering or MBA programs all tend to correlate with better investor outcomes, ceteris paribus (all else being equal). But rarely is all else actually equal: plenty of first-time non-immigrant founders with zero formal pedigree go on to build fantastic companies (this conversation with Redbud VC’s Brett Calhoun specifically comes to mind on that topic), and plenty of founders who “check all the boxes” fail. Data and trends exist to sharpen our questions, not replace our judgment.
From Patrick: “This isn't investment management or private equity, where it's very quantitative. You can run a model and know on average ‘This is what I should expect.’ But with venture there's so much variation. You're making decisions with this puzzle that's incomplete and there's all these foggy areas. Get comfortable with the lack of data.”
Takeaway: Founder signals are a great starting frame. Be very, very cautious using them as a final answer.
Want more? Check out my full conversation with Patrick 👇
Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and more.
Until Next Week 👋
Thanks for reading - have a great week.
-Andrew
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