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“They’re, candidly, people who have made money, been successful and then they’re bored,” Daniel Debow, a serial entrepreneur who sold one of his startups for $227 million, and presented at the conference. “I’ve seen it multiple times with people who have good intentions but bad experience.”

U.S. Investors

Angel investments more than doubled to $91 million from 2012 to 2014, almost all of which has gone to technology and life-sciences companies, according to NACO. The increase mirrors a doubling to $2.4 billion in venture capital investments in the country over the last five years, including from U.S. investors such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

Beneficiaries have been companies such as LightSpeed POS, VarageSale Inc. and 500px as investors seek the next unicorn, closely held startups valued at more than $1 billion. The interest comes as Shopify’s shares have jumped 65 per cent in the U.S. this year, making it the best performing tech IPO in North America while the resource-heavy Standard & Poor’s/TSX Composite equity index declined 8.4 per cent.

Angel training courses have popped up in Silicon Valley to help prepare the dozens of employees who turn into millionaires when a major technology company like Facebook Inc. or Twitter Inc. goes public and want to make investments of their own. In Canada, the startup boom is attracting investors who might not have any tech experience and who would otherwise have backed oil and mineral exploration, said Yuri Navarro, NACO’s executive director.