Angel Investing as a First-Gen Brown Girl

By Bhavya Kashyap

I didn’t grow up around the language of venture. I didn’t know what a cap table was until well into my tech career. No one in my family had “GP” on their résumé. Like a lot of first-gen kids, I was raised to play it safe- to chase security, not risk. Do well in school. Land a stable job. Keep your head down. Don’t fall behind.

For a long time, I did exactly that. I climbed. I earned. I built. But somewhere along the way, I started to feel like I was only seeing one side of the story- the worker side. The operator. The executor. And I started to wonder: Who gets to fund the ideas? Who gets to shape the future not just by building, but by deciding what gets built?

That curiosity is what pulled me toward angel investing. But the path wasn’t straightforward. There was no playbook. No family friend to explain deal terms or mentor to walk me through a cap table. I pieced things together from conversations, from watching others, from asking questions that felt a little too vulnerable at times.

I waited for the day I became an accredited investor, and in the meantime, I studied. Quietly, persistently. I followed early-stage investors on Twitter, bookmarked term sheet breakdowns, and tried to absorb whatever I could. I leaned into business school electives that touched on venture, and took notes on founder-investor dynamics with fresh eyes.

What I started to notice, quietly, and then loudly, was how many brilliant women, especially brown women, were building things and still struggling to raise capital. I’d see their decks. I’d hear their ideas. I’d listen to their pitches and feel that same spark of conviction that I’d felt in rooms with more polished, better-networked founders. But the cheques weren’t landing. Not at the same scale. Not with the same speed.

Meanwhile, I watched other founders (often men, often white) raise quickly, sometimes with less traction and less clarity. I don’t say this with bitterness. Just with a growing awareness that access to capital has never been neutral.

I think a lot about that difference, not just in how capital flows, but in how it feels when you’re on the outside of it. When you’re the one asking, not offering. When you’ve done everything right but still don’t get the “yes.” That experience stays with people. It shapes what they think is possible. It shapes whether they try again.

The gap between who gets believed and who doesn’t was top of mind when I had the chance to finally say yes. My first cheque was high conviction: in the product, the traction, and in the values. It was a fully women-led company. The kind of team that often gets underestimated, overlooked, or underfunded despite being incredibly clear-eyed, creative, and capable. I believed in what they were building and how they were doing it. I’d only planned to invest a modest amount, but I ended up putting in about seven times more than I thought I would. Because it felt like something I wanted to stand behind, not just quietly root for.

For me, becoming an angel investor has been about more than power or status. At its core, it’s about participation. About not waiting for someone else to create the world I want to live in. It’s about putting a small stake behind what I believe in, even if the cheque is small, even if I am still figuring it out.

It has also been a way of reclaiming something. I spent so long trying to prove I belonged in rooms that weren’t built for me. Now I’m trying to help shape rooms where more of us belong, not merely as guests, but as decision-makers.

I’ve learned that angel investing, especially as a woman of color, is emotional work. There is more than data rooms and SAFEs. You become keenly aware of whose ideas resonate with you, and why. You learn to check your own biases. You learn to be honest about what kind of future you want to back, and build the discipline to say no when something doesn’t sit right, even if everyone else is excited about it.

I’m still early in this journey. I don’t have a huge portfolio. I still second-guess myself sometimes. But I’ve come to believe that access to capital, especially for women, and especially for brown women, is so much more than about money. It’s about who gets to dream out loud. It’s about who gets believed.

💁‍♀️Check out more about Bhavya’s story on our instagram!