[troydavis]

Whether you have an advantage or disadvantage depends on your goal.

If you want a series of potentially-fun lottery tickets in industries and teams you choose, you have an advantage.

If you want any return (and I mean any, as in, recovering any capital), you have 3 huge disadvantages: insufficient diversification[1], a lack of dealflow, particularly great deals, and inexperience evaluating and participating in other people’s startups. These are all surmountable, but doing so is an occupation.

If you don’t already read Matt Levine, the “Retail Traders” section of https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-09/retail-vo... applies to picking a small quantity of individual startups too. The reason to do it is because it’s fun (and you’re comfortable losing all of the principal), not to earn average risk-adjusted returns.

[1]: Check out 500 Startups’ presentations and posts on how much diversification is required to expect average returns for the asset class. Here’s one: https://500.co/not-so-simple-math-on-venture-portfolio-size/