Spending & savings · 2 min
Angel returns follow a power law: most cheques die, a few pay for the graveyard. That is survivable only at a position size where zeros are boring. This instrument sizes the cheque against your balance sheet, not against your enthusiasm for the founder.
Position-sizing arithmetic under stated conventions — not investment advice, and no opinion on the deal itself.
Cash and listed holdings — what could actually move this year.
Everything already committed to cheques, SAFEs and venture funds.
House practice: every cheque implies an equal reserve for the next round, or you are the investor who gets diluted at the worst moment.
Everything is calculated in your browser as you type. Nothing you enter is sent or stored, and no account is needed.
Halve the cheque; keep the deal.
$100,000
full commitment — cheque plus 1:1 follow-on reserve
| Angel allocation before this cheque | — |
| Full commitment this cheque implies | — |
| Allocation after, including reserve | — |
| This commitment as a share of liquid assets | — |
| Room left under the 5% line | — |
| If you write | Allocation after | Share of liquid |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| — | — | — |
| — | — | — |
Illiquidity is the quiet term: this money is gone for seven to ten years, cannot be rebalanced, and cannot be lent against. Price the cheque as spent, mentally, on the day you wire it.
One cheque is rarely one cheque. Pro-rata rights, bridge notes and the founder's second company all arrive with your number attached — the 1:1 reserve is the minimum honest accounting.
The reading says nothing about the deal's quality. A cheque can be beautifully sized and still be a bad investment; sizing just ensures a bad investment stays an anecdote.
Everything below is calculated from your inputs; no recommendation on the deal is produced.
commitment = cheque × (1 + reserve) reserve ∈ {0, 1}
alloc_after = (current + commitment) / net_worth
lines: alloc_after ≤ 5% · commitment ≤ 1% of net_worth
The gauge shows the after-cheque allocation against the 5% aggregate line. The verdict also checks the per-cheque line: a single commitment above 1% of net worth reads at least a warning even when the aggregate is comfortable — position sizing is what keeps one enthusiasm from becoming a story you tell for the wrong reasons. Between 5% and 8% the instrument reads "last one for a while"; above 8%, reconsider.
Limitations. The instrument sizes; it does not select. Valuation, terms and the founder are your desk's work, not this one's — and staged deployment across vintages matters as much as any single cheque's size.