[NEXT] A Guide for the Angel-Curious

​A Guide for the Angel-Curious
Lunch & Learn with Alan Jones, M8 Ventures

​Founders can sometimes fall into a binary view of investment: early money comes from family and friends, and the real capital comes from VCs further down the track.

​What often gets missed is what sits in between — angels. Making yourself findable to them before you're even actively raising — understanding how they think, what segments them, what motivates them — can shape how you build your business and manage investor relationships long before you're ever sitting across from a fund.

​This Lunch & Learn is designed to help founders who want to understand the angel landscape well enough to navigate it, and anyone potentially interested in the world of angel investment themselves.

​Alan Jones from M8 Ventures will walk through what angel investing actually is, and what drives individual angels to back the companies they back. We'll also get into the practical side — what makes a company attractive to early-stage angels and how founders build and manage those relationships well.

​Opening with conversational content, followed by Q&A towards the end of the hour.

​About Alan Jones

​Alan Jones has been part of the Australian startup ecosystem longer than most of the companies in it. An early Yahoo hire, founding investor in Pollenizer, Startmate, and Blackbird Ventures, and angel in companies like Canva, Future Super, and HEX — he's seen the full arc of how early-stage capital works in this market.

​He's now General Partner at M8 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed syndicate backing product-led tech startups across Australia and New Zealand. He also co-hosts The Advisory Board on Disrupt Radio, a podcast for startup founders navigating the early stages of building.

​Notably, Alan learned angel investing by going through accelerator programs himself — which tells you something about how he thinks about the craft and who he likes to work with.

​About M8 Ventures

​M8 Ventures is a pre-seed and seed syndicate backing product-led tech startups across Australia, New Zealand, and high-growth emerging markets. They invest from the earliest stages — before most funds are paying attention — and run their deals through a syndicate on the Aussie Angels platform, which means they're actively deploying capital right now.

​Industry-agnostic, founder-friendly, and built by people who've operated before they invested.