Public angel investors are angel investment groups or individual angel investors that you can find online and/or specify themselves as angel investors.
- Advantage: Easy to find.
- Disadvantage: Constantly being approached with investment opportunities and can only fund a tiny portion of those that they see.
The other type of "public" angel is someone who publicly identifies themselves as an angel investor. By going to a site like LinkedIn and searching the keyword "angel investor," you will find such individuals.
Private angel investors are people who have either made just one or a small amount of angel investments or who have the financial ability to make an angel investment but has.
Most "private" angel investors have the means and interest in making an angel investment, but they just don't know about them. Because "private" angels have less noise to choose from, there is a high likelihood that they're going to choose you.
The name of the game here is networking. Networking allows you to find other business owners, executives and/or other people with money.
The easiest way to get started is to target "public" angels and then start your networking process to find "private" angels. While these angels are much harder to find, remember that when you do find them, they have a much higher likelihood of funding you.