If you're an Angel Investor, you're an endangered species. You live in a high-risk environment. Many of your predecessors failed to take even minimum safety precautions to ensure their survival. They didn't survive. If you follow their unwise investment policies, your bank balance is at serious and predictable risk.

An entrepreneur, without a business plan, shouldn't be taken seriously. If you invest in a business without a critical review of company's business plan, you should expect to lose your money. The company's business plan is its roadmap to business success. If roadmap is vague, success is very unlikely. Cashflow charts are to be ignored. You should expect that a successful business plan will require twice as much money as being sought and will produce half as much revenue as being projected.

Due Diligence is one of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's solid recommendations to investing public. It's in your best interests to verify each and every fact in any business plan, BEFORE you risk your money. A concise business plan with specific data makes it easy to verify entrepreneur's claims.

Resumes

The Management Teams' education and work experience are important to potential success of your investment. Business plan education claims, beyond high school, should include name of institution issuing degree and year in which degree was conferred. The Due Diligence questions are following:

1. Is institution accredited by a recognized accrediting organization and did person receive degree in year stated. 2. Relevant work experience should list employer, firm's address, a job description and exact years that person worked for that company. You should verify that each of these companies exists by getting their phone number from phone company and then calling Human Resources (formerly Personnel) Department and verifying work record of person. You can use Net to get Credit Histories and Court records for each person on management team. 3. The company's balance sheet should tell you how much money each member of Management Team has at risk in venture. It Management Team isn't at serious risk of loss, business plan usually fails.

Protect yourself against identity theft

Identity theft is when someone uses, without permission, your personal information in order to commit any frauds or crimes. Identity theft is a felony that is becoming more and more common. That is because some of us are not very careful with personal information, making job easier for those trying to steel our identity. We should always be careful with information like Social Security number, credit card number, birth date, employment information, driver's license number, etc., because if they enter into wrong hands consequences can be very serious. People that have experienced identity theft spend months trying to repair what others have damaged, and in meantime they cannot get a loan or lose a job opportunity or, sometimes, they can get arrested for something they didn't do.

If you have slightest suspicion that someone has gained access to your personal information, acting quickly is a must. First of all, you should get in touch with fraud department of credit bureau where you have your accounts and request them to initiate a credit alert on your accounts. This way creditors are obligated to contact you before taking any actions regarding your accounts. At same time you should close accounts you believe that are corrupted. The second step would be filing a police report and keeping a copy of it so to have a proof of crime.

It is difficult dealing with an identity theft and most of all is difficult to repair what others have messed up for you. We cannot completely prevent identity theft, but we can take some simple precautions to minimize risks. The most important thing to do is to pay attention to your bank statements: they should arrive in time and you should check them very carefully. Your bank statement should always arrive almost at same date every month. If you don't get your statement one month this could mean that someone has changed your billing address to prevent you from discovering any unauthorized activity in your account. Also, you must check every statement as you get it and be sure that you have made all purchases recorded on it.