S3E9: SuperAngel Speed – Ben Zises on Agile Deployment, Building in Public, and the Power of Documentation

Ben’s first angel check was $10,000 into quip when they didn’t even have a name. He’d become their first investor.

Ben treated every angel investment following like he was already running a fund, and wrote comprehensive deal memos for each investment. He sent regular updates to investors in his SPVs, even though they were small and informal. He documented every decision, every pattern he noticed, every mistake he made.

By the time it came to raise SuperAngel.Fund I, he could show his LPs what he’d done so far, and that he’d continue doing what he’d been doing as an angel. There was congruency in the story he was telling with proof to show for it from his angel track record.

Ben’s approach breaks down into three specific practices:

1. Document Your Investment Process

For every investment Ben made as an angel, he created a formal deal memo, outlining the thesis, founder evaluation, market analysis, and the risks.

2. Treat Small Investors Like Future LPs

Ben ran 13 SPVs between 2017 and when he launched his fund in 2021. Some managers treat SPVs as one-off transactions, but he treated the 15-20 people in each SPV as future LPs in SuperAngel.Fund. He’d share portfolio updates, making sure to be transparent about performance.

3. Stay Organized From Day One

“I started off very organized, the investments I was making, the performance, the markups.” This sounds basic, but most angels have no idea what their actual performance is. They can’t tell you their TVPI, MOIC, or even basic portfolio construction metrics.

While Ben was building his track record, he was also building his brand. He started writing on the Super Angel Blog, and maintaining transparency in what founders he was meeting, how he thinks, conversations he was having, which goes against conventional wisdom in venture. Most managers believe you should protect your deal flow, keep your portfolio confidential, and share information only behind layers of NDAs and password-protected data rooms.

Ben does the opposite.

Portfolio companies are listed on his website. His investment style isn’t a black box to navigate for founders.

The practical reality is that everyone has their own CRMs and their own systems for tracking funds they’re interested in. On the LP side, when you make LPs jump through hoops to access basic information about your fund, you’re not protecting intellectual property, you’re creating friction that loses deals. If you’re confident in your numbers, you should show it. In practice, this means sharing the full data room with download rights, being transparent about marks (up and down), and sharing all previous track records with notes to show the development of your style to tell the story of the fund you’re raising for. Transparency compounds, and Ben’s story is proof.

SuperAngel.Fund invests as close to the first check as possible. Ben calls this “day zero” investing. The strategy requires throwing away traditional portfolio construction models.

“I have incredible agility and flexibility. Sure I have a fund model that breaks down the projections, just like a founder might give you projections, but we all know projections. I mean, come on.”

Ben can run $25 million funds for the next 30 years. He’s not trying to scale to $100 million, hire associates, or build a platform team.

“The model works as a solo GP, from the management fee potential as well as the carried interest. It’s easier to return a $25 million fund than a hundred million dollar fund, and it’s also easier to deliver higher percentage returns when you have a smaller fund.”

Ben’s chosen a different path: stay small, stay focused, and stay deeply connected to founders.

“At the end of the day, what I love about investing is: you are what your numbers say you are. You could be personable and have the greatest smile but you need to put up numbers and performance to stay in this business.”

Build your track record before you need it. Document obsessively. Be transparent. Let the work speak for itself.

Special thanks to Matt Curtolo for the intro to Ben 🙏

To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com