Launching November 5, 2026 · Bangalore
The Business of Belief
Angel Investing Stories of Fear, Risk, and the People We Bet On
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Why I wrote this
My decade of building LetsVenture and working with founders and investors has taught me this truth: a lot of our investing behaviour is a reflection of our own biases and beliefs. Our belief on the founder, our bet on the market we believe will grow, our belief on our own ability to identify the right businesses and place our bets on them.
I have been writing on Substack for a year now, mostly around angel investing and building in the startup space. Many people assume I had a finance background when I started. I am actually an engineer who happened to stumble into the world of investing. That also meant some of the work in the initial days did not come easy — but as I learnt, I also realised that there was no one place I could refer to, for the complexities of angel investing, except to listen to podcasts, read, and have conversations with other investors. What I also realised was that most of this was a reflection of what was happening in the US (I am talking about 2013). This led us at LetsVenture to also run angel investing masterclasses. While usually these were rooms full of at least 50 people, a lot of the questions and conversations left a deep impression on me, and also pushed me to dig deeper.
Angel investing teaches you every day - The conversations that were not deep enough to reflect the potential, or the missed bets due to a bias we carry. Last year I started writing on Substack — more because I wanted to help a lot of my friends understand this space with no pressure. What resulted was a many started reaching out with things like: “reading your posts has helped me overcome my fear of money,” “I made my first investment after reading and reflecting on what was being written,” “I now have a great conversation with my son who is a founder and has just started building.” All this led me to write the book - fuelled by the encouragement, and the need to structure everything in one place.
The real trigger came when I attended a book writing workshop with my long-time friend, and now my book editor, Susan. She has been writing books for a long time, with many bestsellers to her credit. The workshop helped with structure, and helped me clarify my own thought process.
The more time I put in writing this book, the more my conviction has built that investing is so much more than money: the bets we take, and the losses we endure. It is a lot about our own relationship to how we win and lose, and how we respond when we are in a position of power. Hope this book inspires you as much as it inspired me as I wrote it.
— Shanti Mohan
What it’s about
Angel investing gets talked about like a spreadsheet problem. It isn’t. This book is built from real rounds and real conversations — the ones where the numbers said no and someone backed the founder anyway, and the ones where the numbers said yes and it still fell apart. It’s for anyone who wants to understand why people actually say yes to a startup, not just how.
It is a book about the stories of investing, frameworks and strategies, structured to make it easy to understand, and hopefully easier to implement.
Who is this book for
This book is written for anyone who wants to understand the private market investing space - whether you are someone who is intrigued by startups, someone who wants to startup or someone who is looking to invest.
First-time angel investors — you’ve got the cheque book. This is the judgment that should come before you use it.
Curious HNIs and funds — if you’re weighing whether private markets belong in your portfolio at all, start here.
From the author
I write The PitchRoom on this same subject, every week — frameworks for investors, honest notes for founders, and personal essays from a decade of watching India’s private markets from the inside.
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