Are my angel investments beating the market? Today, I crunched the numbers to find out. TL;DR: I’m at a 25% IRR.

This beats stocks by a large margin. 

Let’s back up a little. What does this number mean, and how did I calculate it? 

What Is IRR? 

To know if I’m beating stocks, I have to calculate my Internal Rate of Return, or IRR. This number shows my annual percentage gain.

Let’s take a simple example…

You invested $10,000 on January 1st, 2024. On January 1st, 2025, the company was acquired and you got back $20,000. 

Your IRR is 100%. In other words, you doubled your money in a year. 

How IRR Works In My “Fund”

When you add more investments, things get more complicated. But it’s the same idea: figure out when I invested, when I exited, and derive a rate of return. 

Most of my investments have not exited yet. For those, we use their current valuation and a date of today.

I am very conservative about valuations. I only mark up a company when they raise a new priced round, not when they raise a SAFE at a higher price. This is how the top VC firms operate. 

I also accounted for the likely fees in my syndicate investments and for any dilution thus far. 

What Data Do We Need? 

I keep a spreadsheet of all my investments. This is the info I need for the IRR calculation:

• Date investment made
• Amount
• Exit value of investment (if exited)
• Date of exit
• Current value of investment (if not exited)

For this calculation, we’ll look at my “Fund 1” of 35 companies. This is a typical number of companies for a venture fund. “Fund 1” includes investments made from June 2021 to August 2025.

Crunching The Numbers

I used Grok 4 Expert to crunch the numbers for me. 

You can also use the XIRR function in most spreadsheet programs. But I like the step-by-step, carefully explained work that Grok does, so I went with that. 

I fed Grok a spreadsheet with the data I mentioned above. Now, the moment of truth…

Grok found a 24.7% IRR!

Beating the Market

A 25% IRR beats the market handily. And it better — investing in startups is risky and illiquid!

The S&P 500 has averaged a 10% annual return in data going back to 1957. The NASDAQ Composite has hit an 11% return over the last 20 years. 

The difference between a 25% IRR and 10% has a huge impact over time. 

If you invest $1,000 at a 10% growth rate, you have $2,594 dollars in 10 years. Invest that same $1,000 at a 25% growth rate, and you have $9,313, or 3.6 times as much.

Wrap-Up

I was really surprised my results were this good! 

There’s a huge caveat here: this IRR is based on paper gains. Converting paper gains to actual cash isn’t easy.

But for a portfolio that’s only a little over 4 years old, this is great progress.

Now, time to meet more founders and find that next great investment…

More on tech: 

How My “Fund” Is Beating Over 90% of VC’s

Yes, You Can Angel Invest $5k Direct 

Meet My Latest Investment: Memelord

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