Ep 61 | Angel Investing Isn’t Just for the Ultra-Wealthy
A lot of high earners are doing everything right on paper and still feel stuck. Not financially stuck. Mentally stuck. Priya Malani sits down with Marcia Dawood, angel investor, TEDx speaker, and author of the forthcoming Unapologetic Wealth, to unpack why so many people, especially women, struggle to act on the wealth they're building. They get into the surprising science behind inherited money fear, why financial avoidance is rarely about discipline, and how identifying your values is actually the first investing decision you make. If you've ever delegated your finances out of discomfort or let a raise disappear without a plan, this conversation is a useful mirror.
Takeaways:
The one hangup people have once they have wealth is that they don't align it with their values and don't have a clear picture of their goals.
Fear around money isn't always personal, it can be inherited, passed down through generations in ways that are measurably biological.
Women aren't bad with money or overly risk averse, they're risk unpracticed, and the fix is reps, not a personality change.
Choosing zero exposure to private markets is still an active portfolio decision, even if it doesn't feel like one.
Modeling financial confidence isn't just for you, it shapes how the next generation thinks about money before they ever earn any.
Follow Priya Malani:
LinkedIn | Instagram | Youtube | Stash Wealth
Guest Bio:
Marcia Dawood is the author of Do Good While Doing Well, TEDx speaker, Podcast host, and an early-stage investor who serves as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. She is a venture partner with Mindshift Capital and the chair emeritus of the Angel Capital Association (ACA), a global professional society for angel investors. She is also an associate producer on the award-winning documentary Show Her the Money. Her new book, Unapologetic Wealth - Rewrite Your Money Story From Any Beginning, releases in March 2026.
Guest Links:
Transcription
Introducing Marcia Dawood and Her Angel Investing Journey
Hey guys, welcome back to the F Word. For the past few weeks I've been on this journey of unpacking wealth and power. Today's guest is going to help us look at it from a different perspective. I've known Marsha Dowwood for about 5 years. She's an early stage investor, Ted X speaker, podcast host, and the author of Do Good While Doing Well. She's got a new book launching in March of 2026 called Unapologetic Wealth. Rewrite your money story from any beginning. We're going to talk about her books and her perspective on, well, power and investing. Let's get into it.
Who the fuck am I to tell you what to do with your money? My name is Priya Malani, currently managing millions of hard working dollars. Enough for play. Let's talk. Welcome to the F word smart money, no?
Marsha, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to chatting and learning more from you. I always love getting together with you and learn so much. And I want to start with a quick plug of your powerful Ted Talk title, Do Good While Doing Well, which was also the title of your first book. What is Do Good While Doing Well all about?
South In 2012, I was invited to an Angel investing meeting and I got to see entrepreneurs pitching their companies and I was fascinated. I thought, where have I been? I've been working in corporate America. I think I've been living under a rock. I have absolutely no idea what is happening right now, but this is really, really cool. And I thought, well, how can I get involved? Because that's not like I thought you had to be a billionaire, fly private planes, like have a finance degree. You have to have all this knowledge to be able to invest like this.
Well, it turns out that you really don't. And in a lot of cases, if you're really passionate about what the entrepreneur is working on, in some cases, it could be healthcare, climate, all kinds of different things. It's really advantageous to get involved and start to help these companies to grow because in order to see the innovation in the world that we want to see, we have to invest in it in some way, shape or form. And in a lot of cases, that could be money, it could be time, it could be all kinds of things.
Yeah, and that actually tracks back to a personal story for you. If you wouldn't mind sharing one of the originating reasons why Angel investing became so fascinating to you?
You know, back to the idea of doing good and doing well, I just was fascinated at the idea that you could do good, meaning like you could help a company or you could help get a change into the world and you could potentially get a return. Because I had always believed that it was about charity. Those were the people who were doing all the good. And then if you wanted to get a return, then you had to invest in the stock market or whatever, you were investing in real estate, whatever. And so this concept was really interesting to me because thought, wow, I would like to do good.
And, and by the way, I don't really know that there's a lot of charities out there that are getting the funding that they truly deserve. So while I love donating charities and I think it's a great thing, I just don't think I think they're extremely underfunded. And I think most people who work at those charities would probably agree with me. And so how do we help them to kind of get to another level? And this is a way that people could participate, but in a lot of cases that there's not a lot of awareness around it.
What did you uncover as you were spreading the word about doing good while doing well, and did it in some part lead to the idea of your second book, Unapologetic Wealth?
Yes, actually it did.
Unpacking Why Women Struggle with Financial Agency
So what happened was I thought, OK, people don't really know about early stage investing. And as I started to learn about it over the last 14 years or so, I realized how little funding went to women, how many innovations just kind of get lost on the cutting room floor per SE because they just don't have the funding that they need in order to make it. So I thought, OK, maybe if I tried to get more awareness around this, people would be more apt to participate. So I started a podcast in 2021 called The Angel Next Door that's going on still and has over 170 episodes.
I did the TE DX talk in Charlotte in 2022. I wrote do good while doing well, thinking, OK, hey, this is like a demystifying of all this. And yet I still was kind of preaching to my own choir and, and talking to people who were Angel investors already. And I'm like, no, no, I really think we should get more people involved. Let's see how many more people might want to be a participants. And then when I would finally talk to people who were not participants and said, Hey, you say you do want to do this, but what's holding you back?
And finally, I got people to really admit the truth to me, which was especially women have a hard time with where their money is located. Their husband does a lot of the investing, they do the philanthropy, or they don't really even have anything to do with their own finances because that's like a chore that they delegate to their husband because they're doing all the child rearing. I mean, they're like, we're 100 reasons, but it came down to I just don't feel comfortable or I don't feel like I have enough knowledge to make investment decisions myself. And I don't even know how I'm really using my money. And the next things that would happen is you'd start to see a lot of people who were, you know, buying the bigger house, getting the fancier car and really never having that true alignment with our money.
So what is the message of unapologetic wealth to those people whose mindset may be a little would you call it stuck?
I just think there's a lot of limiting beliefs out there. And you could go back to, you know, women couldn't even get a credit card in their own name until 1974. But even you could go back farther than that. Like, think about dowries. Think about the way that men and women have been treated. It's not women's fault. It's not men's fault. It's nobody's fault. It's just how society has treated money and treated people based on gender. And if we could start to make a change with that, because now women do have opportunities that they didn't have.
And again, I'm generalizing so, you know, bear with me here, but you know, women have opportunities to go to school, get pH, DS, work and CEO level positions. I mean, there's lots and lots of opportunities today that, you know, we didn't really have before or it took a long time to get there. And I feel like if we don't actually take advantage of these opportunities, we will not only stay stock, but we will also model that for the future generations. And that's kind of what scares me the most.
Yeah, I agree with that big time. Getting a handle of on your finances is not just for you, but it benefits Next Gen. who is modeling themselves after what they're seeing and hearing in the household. That's a lot of what we talked about with our clientele. If you had to pinpoint it, what is the one hang up? Because you're clearly talking to an audience that has the money to do good to begin to invest. What is that one in in a single sentence? What is the hang up that people have once they have wealth?
I think they don't really align it with their values and they don't have a true picture of their goals.
Well said. And it really all tracks back to thinking first about what your goals are, what your values are, so then you can then put your money in that direction. Yeah. Most of the people listening to this podcast are in their 30s. They're ambitious, they're working hard. They want financial freedom, but at the same time, they want impact and change. And if they're hard earned, dollars can help with that. They're actively seeking those opportunities.
Setting Financial Goals and Practicing Risk in Relationships
So how would you guide someone who wanted to use their wealth to do good? Where do you begin?
You think you really do begin with goal setting. Like if I had known what I know now when I was 25, I would be so much farther ahead. I would have actually thought out and really thought about how I wanted my money to be used, to be invested, to build the future and the wealth that I really wanted. And we talked about wealth. We're not just talking about money. We're talking about health, wealth, time, wealth, relationship, wealth, all of these things. Sometimes you're going to buy time with your money and sometimes you're going to buy money with your time. You know, just depends, right?
So I've seen too often where younger people especially, they'll they'll get that raise or they'll get some type of a salary increase or a bonus and the next thing you know, they're like getting the fancier car or they're doing something with the money because they're going on a vacation. But have they really thought about long term planning and what that means in alignment of their goals and their values?
How do you think about goals in context of individual goals versus couple goals?
Yeah, that's a great question and I do address that in the book. I give even scripts about like how you can talk to your partner about money, about the financial situation. This isn't like a gotcha exercise. It's certainly not something that should feel bad. I mean, I it might feel a little bit strange at first to be talking about it. Women really haven't been invited to the table to talk about money in any type of situation. So sometimes it is uncomfortable to talk about it at first, but then it's like a muscle and like once you kind of build it up it, it gets a little bit easier.
So I think right away in any, if you're getting into any kind of a serious relationship or if you're married, just having those conversations early and you don't have to have them super often, but have the door be open to be able to have these conversations when things come up. And especially if you're in a family and you want to really align with what it is that you want to do and the type of money that you could be coming into. Let's say that, you know, at the end of the year, you're going to get a bonus.
Well, I would really talk about that with your with your partner. And however that looks to see, you know, what does it mean? The more we talk about it, the more it's out in the open, the easier it's going to be to make the decision and the less animosity that would come later on down the road if, for example, the bonus came and the one person did something with the money that the other person didn't really agree with. And the next thing you know, like all these other problems are coming up.
That's awesome. I love that you include scripts in the book because so many people feel like they don't know where to begin the conversation. What would you say to the women going back a little bit that delegate their agency around their finances? How do you talk about that?
Yeah, agency is a good word and people have asked me about that word before. But I do think agency is like, it's not really control. It's more like it's knowledge, knowledge control. It's all wrapped into one. It's like how you really feel and what you believe in when it comes to your money. I I certainly do not think in any way that women are bad with money, but it is something that's out there in the world that, oh, women are just bad with. Like it's like some kind of a, you know, like a weird mantra that people think about. So I'm, I think I believe that women just haven't been practiced enough.
So it's like some people say, oh, women are so risk averse. I don't believe that. I believe that women are risk astute and they're actually quite good at evaluating risk, figuring out if they want to take the risk. They're very good at stretching money, budgeting, all of those types of things. But really at the end of the day, they're risk unpracticed, so they need to just practice a little bit more. And I think that's when you'll start to see the alignment come into play. And the couple conversations can be a lot easier because both people can get out in the open what it is that they really care about, what they value, and be able to align their money with those values.
This is bringing up so many interesting questions. One that is top of mind for me is do you address in the book, like, let's say in a heterosexual relationship, a woman who's looking to get involved, but maybe her partner is not so encouraging of that? I'm sure you've talked to women like that. I know I have. What do you say? What is your advice when they're not necessarily they're looking to get involved in the conversation, but that interest is not welcome.
Yeah, I do have a couple examples of that in the book. When I was writing the book, I actually reached out to people and said, hey, I need some money stories. Who's got a money story? I thought maybe I'd get 3. I got like 300. So there were a lot of money stories to be told. But yeah, it is challenging at first. I think in a lot of cases, if the conversation isn't well received at first, there might be something else going on besides just money. So also something to look at, but I think approaching it delicately by saying, hey, I'm not interested in, you know, taking this over. I would. I really just want to be involved. I want to be able to have honest conversations and the more open and approachable the one party is and then I think the other party will become more open.
Don't get discouraged if it doesn't go exactly as you expected the first time. And if that's something you're looking to do, then stay. Stay involved, continue to learn, continue to bring it up. You know, when you wrote the book, the title Unapologetic Wealth, what inspired the title?
I just think that especially women are apologetic to a fault, and they it's always like, sorry, sorry. Sorry. Like when we're young, like I have I have two girls and it was like, oh, don't say sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. But it like, and they're older now. I have a 24 and a 27 year old and they still say sorry all the time. So it's just so ingrained, I think in society, in how we've been treated and how the world works and how things work. And I just I've been working with women entrepreneurs for 14 years now, and I can't tell you the amount of times I've been pitched by a company that was being run by a female CEO, and in some capacity the woman would be really apologetic.
She might even be apologizing for asking for money. Like not sorry, but like not sorry, but like I'm asking for money and. Like, you know, or I apologize for, you know, to take all your time. But like all of these things come up and I'm like, no, you know, it's just, just don't be sorry for wanting to be successful. Don't be sorry for needing money for your company. Don't be sorry for being creative and having an idea and wanting to build it, especially if the world needs your product.
Just out of curiosity, in the book, do you cover Angel investing?
Absolutely. So the first part of the book is about kind of letting go of limiting beliefs and figuring out kind of where you want to be. And then the second part of the book is very much about goal setting, about what is investing all about, all the way from the stock market to real estate to private investing. So I give examples. There's a whole section on private investing and it's it's not long at all. It's in a lot of cases people have said it's easily digestible and things are bite sized because you don't have to come from a finance background to be able to understand it because I don't come from a finance background, so I'm I'm trying to use English instead of, you know, financialese and in a lot of cases also I I put charts and like picture images in the book because sometimes I'm a more visual learner and I think a lot of people are that way.
So I try to work with them.
I love that. That's very thoughtful. And I think that is a good segue because I'd love to ask you a few questions about Angel investing. I'm genuinely curious. What is Angel investing? How does it differ from traditional investing?
Yeah. So Angel investing as opposed to what I call going to your brokerage account, like wherever you have your money for retirement or for savings or whatever, and you buy individual stocks, individual bonds, or you may buy some type of mutual funds or index funds. Traditional Angel Investing is when you are buying shares, specifically shares, usually in a privately held company. So they don't have a ticker symbol. You're not going to see it in those exchanges. You're actually buying the shares and you're becoming a true owner of that company.
So would you say there's an overlap between entrepreneur and Angel investor or does the investor contribute?
I like to say that yes, there is definitely an overlap. There's a lot of times where, you know, a previous entrepreneur who's exited their company might decide to become a full-time Angel investor, but you also have doctors, lawyers. I mean, literally people from all walks of life. I know some Angel investors who run a company that's in real estate and totally unrelated, nothing similar whatsoever, but they're very successful and they want to be able to give back. And they love this idea of being able to help entrepreneurs. And so they've become Angel investors because just like in Shark Tank, you do have an opportunity to mentor, right?
So a lot of times Angel investors will help in different ways. And I mean, I really don't know a person out there that they could say that they're not pretty good at one thing or they don't have one area of expertise that couldn't help a company in some way, shape or form. So be open to learning and seeing how the world works.
Yeah, I'm sure. You've never had anyone come up to you and say I don't have enough money to be an Angel investor. So what would you say to them?
Yeah, I did have a comment about that in my Ted X Talk. I guess I gave it away in the book a little bit, but yeah, the minimum amount that somebody usually can invest is it can be $500, it could be $1000. I mean, that's pretty much everybody has that amount of money. And it's, I'm I'm not saying everybody should go and do it. It's definitely risky. And you know, at the end of the day, the only way you can invest is if you understand the risk involved.
But I do think for people, especially younger people, this is a great opportunity to kind of dip your toe into the water of understanding entrepreneurship and understanding innovation and what it means to be able to help it. Even if you were going to take a small amount of money and invest it, it's a lot different than just making a straight donation. At the end of the day, you can learn a lot and even if the company fails, you can learn just as much, if not more when you fail.
OK, so you've probably seen this before. I know I have. What if I have this friend who keeps choosing to invest in these types of opportunities and the returns aren't even close to getting back? What they put in? What would you say to someone who's more aggressive about prioritizing Angel investing over traditional investing?
Yeah. So I think the important part is to and to really understand is that this is not a get rich quick scheme. You know, this is something that is true long term strategy. And the most successful Angel investors that I know, they're the ones who have been invested for at least 15 years. So they invested in their first company 15 years ago and they invested in their last company yesterday. So it's on a constant rolling cycle just like the stock market. If you invest in January and then you get out at the end of the year, that's not how it works. And so really my guidance is that make sure you're maxing out your 401K, make sure that you have all of the other basics. If you do not have the basics covered, this is not the time to be dipping your toe in the water of Angel Investing.
But once you do have those basics covered and you just want to try this and you're interested in it, then I I do think it's something to think about and consider as a long term strategy. And if you understand that, then you understand like you're not going to be writing off an investment on your taxes next year that you just invested in this year. You know, it's going to take some time. It's going to take time to play out. Most of the companies will probably fail. I would say the portfolio for sure 80% will fail and the remaining 20%, you're going to get your money back, maybe 2X. And if you're lucky, maybe you'll get an outlier. A lot of people have 1 company that has given them a 10X or 100X return, but you can't just be doing this to get that return, right? You have to be doing it because you care about it.
Does it ever worry you that because you are so good at what you do and you're so well networked within this community, you probably do see a lot more winners than most others will ever see. And so does that ever worry you that you're encouraging people to get involved in something that they may not have the same success with?
I mean, I hope that they get even more success than I have. I don't know that I've been so successful. I mean, I've been I've had some great returns and I've had some companies that have really bombed. You know, so we've seen it happen on both sides, but I think it's really important. And I want to reiterate, if the basics are not covered, if you're putting yourself in financial distress to invest in this, then I I do not think this is the right thing to be doing. This is something that it's going to take time and it's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of learning and a lot of networking.
And I, you know, so it's it's more of an ongoing learning strategy. And I would say I've met a lot of people that they're doing so much better than I am. And I mean, I actually for the last two years have been kind of pausing my own investing. I've been trying to get people to understand that it's actually a possibility to do this. I mean, I think now I know over 5000 people who are Angel investors and they're not all the same, right? So there are different levels. There's people that are a lot more successful in their careers than I am.
There's people just starting out, but it's kind of a cool community that as long as you're interested in learning more about it and being a good human and thinking about impact, I think there's a place for you here.
OK, Marsha, I'm going to ask you the difficult question. I was chatting with my friend Pia about this recently. We recorded a podcast episode about it. Wealthy people have a lot of power and for the rest of us, for people who have wealth. You know, people who are making good money, upper middle class, all of that, like at what point does building wealth, it doesn't feel like the right thing or you don't want more power. Or I think we're navigating a very interesting time in this country in the world as it relates to the ultra wealthy and how they wield their power and is some people don't want to be like that. What does it matter to care about money and also not want to get too powerful?
There's two things that kind of come up with this and it is something that I feel strongly about. And the biggest message here is that this is not our fault, OK? This is actually something that has been kind of ingrained in our brain. And if you bear with me here for one second, I actually have this tiny passage I'm going to read from the book, if that's OK. It is so clear when you hear the story how our brains are wired and it has to do with DNA. So I was reading a book called Deeper Than Money by Chloe Elise and I was reminded of a study conducted by researchers at Emory University.
And in the experiment, mice were exposed to the scent of cherry blossoms while receiving mild electric shocks to their feet. Over time, the mice began to associate the scent of cherry blossoms with pain and fear. Eventually, the shock was no longer necessary and the center load triggered anxiety. Now, we've heard about this before, like Pavlov's dog, right? But here's where it gets interesting. The offspring of those mice that were never shocked themselves also showed signs of fear when exposed to the cherry blossom scent, and they inherited the fear response to something they had never personally experienced.
And it didn't stop there. The grandchildren of the original mice, 2 generations removed from the initial trauma, still responded to fear with no shocks. So think about the times that money was scarce in families, the times that parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, that this is passed down not just from our observations, this is actually passed down in our DNA. We have a lot to unpack here, right? And I think for a lot of people, they're just like, go, go, go. They're really ambitious. They're out there to get, you know, the next big raise, the next bonus, the next this side of the other thing.
But if we really stop, especially at a younger age, and think about what is it that I really care about and where do I want to be 10 years from now, 20 years from now? It's kind of easy to say, hey, let me see what I can do in a year or maybe 2 years. But where do you truly want to be in 10 years? Because 10 years actually does come out faster than you think. And then you want to start to really align that. But you have to do the hard work first of really looking at it and saying, well, where? Where are my beliefs and what what is holding me back?
That is insanely powerful and goes to show the importance of doing the work.
Guest's Key Advice and Episode Conclusion
Now. You don't want to pass. You don't want to pass that on to future generations. My gosh. Well, this next question, it's a tough one to ask you because you're barely out of your 30s. You had to look back and give some Money Advice to your 30 year old self. What would it be?
I think it would be really cool to to learn about and know about private investing at a much younger age because even by by the time I did have some money to invest at that level, I really didn't know anything about it. So if I were younger and had learned and had even understood what entrepreneurship was and, and all of the innovation that was happening kind of all behind the scenes that nobody really sees. You know, in a lot of cases people think, oh, a big corporation, like, you know, some of these really, really big companies, they're going to be the ones doing all the innovating. But that's really not true.
So in a lot of cases it's the smaller company. Somebody has an idea just because it was so terribly painful for them to try to solve the problem on their own and they couldn't do it. So they just decided to start a company and hear that story all the time with entrepreneurs. And that's wonderful. But like, if I had known that at a younger age and I had really learned about it and just started following along and and seeing what people were doing, I think I would have had a much different perspective than when I did have some more money that I could invest.
Just simply seeking out and understanding the entire landscape. You're an incredible support to entrepreneurs, even outside of your investing. And the amount of advice and guidance that you've provided to me in my journey with Stash Wealth is so tremendous. You are truly a gem in terms of your desire to to help and I wish there were more people like you in this world. I am so grateful. Switching gears a little bit, Marsha, we always end this show with a segment that I call Best Bite. I'm a huge foodie. What is something, something that you've eaten recently, maybe when you were up here visiting or maybe something in Charlotte that you kind of just blew you away and you'd say, Priya, you need to go here and you need to order this.
I would have to say that I had some really, really incredible sashimi the other day and it was here in Charlotte, which was kind of surprising. Sorry, Charlotte, but sometimes you think you have to go to like super fancy places in New York City. But yeah, we we had a really interesting and lovely Valentine finds dinner at Hastia here in Charlotte, so it's great.
OK Hastia, I have.
Not heard of that?
Oh, it's new. OK. OK. I felt like I made my way through the sushi sashimi scene in in Charlotte, so I haven't heard of this one, so I've got to add it to my list. Thank you. That's a great recommendation. Finally, Marsha, where can people find you? Follow you? Please give us your handles. Tell us where we can stay in touch with your journey.
Yeah, well, fortunately, there's not a whole lot of people in the world named Marsha Marsha Dollwood, so you can find me at all the handles just with my name and of course, the URL, www.marshadollwood.com. And actually, if your listeners want to get a free chapter of the book Unapologetic Wealth, which isn't even out yet, you can go to my website and download the free chapter. You can also get a free chapter of Do Good While Doing Well Too.
Beautiful. Thank you for that. And is it available yet for pre-order on Amazon?
Yes, it's available for pre-order everywhere and anywhere that you buy books.
Beautiful. We'll drop those links into the show notes. Marsha, thank you so much for being here and touching on a topic that really doesn't get as much airtime as it deserves. So thank you so much.
It doesn't. I appreciate you having me.
Absolutely. I hope to everyone listening that this has you thinking just a little bit differently about investing or reconsidering your relationship with your own agency as your wealth builds. If you have a second and you think of someone who might enjoy the episode, please consider sharing it. It's the best way to help others find the show. And if you have a SEC, more than a SEC, we'd really appreciate you leaving us a review so we can learn what's resonating and what's not and continue to grow and do better. As always, like subscribe and follow us wherever you're listening. And that way you'll be up to date on future episodes. All right, thanks so much for listening. See you next time.
Thanks for listening to the F word with Priya Malani. If you like what you heard, hit subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a review while you're at it or approval junkies. Don't forget you can find a ton of great resources, content, courses and other freebies at stashwealth.com. Now for the capital F
THE STUFF OUR LAWYERS WANT US TO SAY: Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
