Put most succinctly, my early stage investing activity is a hybrid of angel investing and venture capital. Maybe that makes me a Venture Angel, or an Angel Capitalist. In the final analysis, the label is not important. There are easier ways to engineer financial returns in the capital markets - for me, angel investing is equal parts passion and business. We see ourselves as a true partner to entrepreneurs. We actively help to build an entrepreneur’s business by leveraging our knowledge, experience, and network to create a successful company.

This is his list of differences (excuse the caps, I was too lazy to change them):

FLEXIBLE INVESTMENT PARAMETERS

A GUT FEELING

FIRST ROUND FOCUS

SIGNIFICANT BOOTSTRAPPING EXPERTISE

AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PERSPECTIVE

COLLABORATIVE FUNDRAISING

WE ARE NOT VC TASKMASTERS

A PARTNER YOU CAN COUNT ON

SELFISH PERSONAL INTEREST

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

You really need to read the rest of the details. It’s a fundamentally different approach to investing in a startup. I would love to have him working and investing in one of my ideas like Jumble Lunch. Did you hear that Jesse?

The first venture capital blog is by a Florida Venture Capitalist named Dan Rua. I found him through one of the companies he’s invested in PayPerPost. I’ve blogged about why I wish I was Dan Rua before. I will forgive him for being a Florida Gators fan since his blog is a good read.

I recently found a blog that looks like it must have been one of the first venture capitalist blogs. I’m sure this blog is not news to most of you in the market since it has over 50,000 subscribers to its RSS feed. That’s a lot of people reading a blog. I wouldn’t want to argue with 50,000 blog readers.

First, venture capitalists usually know what they are talking about. If they didn’t, then they won’t be doing what their doing for long.

Second, they usually aren’t afraid to run their mouths. They are opinionated and not afraid to call it like they see it.

Third, they usually have access to information that other people don’t have.

Fourth, they have experiences, connections and friends that usually give them something interesting to write about.

Fifth, they seem to have a lot of time to go to cool conferences that I don’t have time to go to.

Sixth, most have a good ability to create a succinct summary of anything.

Seventh, they are usually working with cutting edge companies that are interesting to learn about.

Finally, I love entrepreneurship and venture capitalists are all about entrepreneurship.

One thing I find interesting about venture capitalists is that they don’t expect or plan to have all their ideas become enormous successes. In fact, quite the opposite. I’ve heard it said that if a venture capitalist invests in 10 companies then they expect 8 to fail, 1 to have reasonable success and 1 to hit it big. If this happens, then a venture capitalist is happy. Anything more and it’s a bonus. I see it as spreading your investment across a set of great ideas.

I believe Cambrian House has the potential to do something very similar with someone’s time. In a previous post I said that I think it’s a good idea for talented people to share their skills across multiple projects. Imagine that you are a venture capitalist and your skills and time are the assets you have to invest. Cambrian House gives you the platform to do so. By participating in 10 projects that you believe will be a success, then you are giving yourself a much higher probability of success. If even one of those 10 projects goes big, then you’ll be in a very good position.

Now, just imagine that something you create for one Cambrian House project can be shared with another project. All that is required to earn a share of the other project is the time to integrate your previous work. I’ll give two examples of work that I’ve done that could be integrated in other projects. I created the captcha image and google mashup for Robin Hood Fund. Both of these could pretty easily shared with other projects.

This type of interaction is something that could set the Cambrian House community apart from other communities. Projects can more quickly roll out new functions. Talented people can receive a share of multiple projects. That’s a win win in my book. The real question will be how the owner of the code will know that another project needs it.

In my book, Cambrian House has always been about creating a revenue stream and not just a one time payment. Cambrian House 2.0 has made this even more apparent.