I once placed a phone call that killed a startup deal. 

We had a company in front of us, let's call it Company Z, that Tundra Angels was evaluating. A number of our investor peers were highly interested in this one. 

On paper, this deal made a lot of sense. The startup was considerably de-risked and was light years ahead with progress compared to other peer startups that had to spend tens or millions to get to the same spot. 

There is sort of heads-on due diligence that Tundra Angels does with the company. Tundra Angels requests information. Company provides that information. There's a back and forth directly through the proverbial front door with a startup. 

But also, part of the Tundra Angels' due diligence process is to get intel. Specifically, asymmetric intelligence. Intelligence that no one else knows about this situation. In this case, you don't go through the front door of the startup to get it. Using the same metaphor, you talk to one of their neighbors.

In this case, there was another investment firm in my network that Tundra Angels co-invests with, and I knew that they were looking at the deal too. So, I called this person up. 

Let's call the investor, Doug. 

Doug: "Yes, we have been in discussions with Company Z. We saw them pitch. When the CEO left the room, it turns out that one of our Partners realized that they knew one or two people close to the inner circle of the founder who could speak to the experience from a professional standpoint.

This Partner did some investigation, and came back with some intelligence that puts the company in a bad light."

Then Doug's voice softened a bit as he said, “Don't repeat this to anybody, but this founder is known to lash out in anger at the people around them."

Because of that, we are going to pass on this company. 

Whoa. 

I still remember having this phone conversation. I was at Copper State Brewery downtown Green Bay. I remember where I was standing. I remember the window I was looking out of when Doug and I were talking. 

Moments like this are THAT important that you remember the exact context. 

I listened carefully, and then responded with, "Wow. There would have been no way that I could know that. Thank you for this."

After hanging up with Doug, one thing was irrefutably clear - we could not pursue Company Z for investment. 

Here is the part I want to call out - there was no way we would have known that from the pitch. Not from the deck. Not from the data room. It came from one phone call, to another investor who I knew was also reviewing the deal that happened to have a network to be close enough to know the truth.

A lot of the time, my role feels closer to an investigative journalist than an investor.

As the years have gone on, we at Tundra Angels have built out what you might see as an asymmetric intellience layer. If I think that we need some color on one theme, then I call this person because I expect them to be closer to the inner circle. If I think we need some additional context around that theme, then I call this person. If the relationship is real and the person is close enough, they almost always have something.

If I were an investigative journalist and were looking to write an article, I'd call this person an "anonymous source." 

Since I am an investor, I just call them "one of my contacts." It's people in our network who will remain nameless due to possessing highly confidential and non-public information. But gives the color we at Tundra Angels needs to make a much better informed decision on the company. 

It lives inside the network and almost nowhere else.

Now, the front-door due diligence is critical, but it is also from the biased lens of the founder(s). It's like a snapshot in time. 

But our goal is to take the snapshot the company gives us and turn it into a panorama. We want to see whole story of what is happening around the company, not just the frame the founder chooses to show us. 

Sometimes it confirms what we already believed. Sometimes it quietly blows the whole thing up, the way it did with Company Z. Either way, it informs the decision in a way nothing in the official process ever could.

Many times, if I discover something negative or a red flag in asymmetric intelligence with a company, I  never communicate any of these asymmetric intelligence findings to our Tundra Angels investors. It's just part of the work that I do. These companies never get to the pitch meeting, for good reason. 

But that doesn't negate the vast importance of asymmetric intelligence behind the scenes. 

The same network that gives investors intel to the deals we should pursue or not gives founders the intel they seek as to why you should be an investor of choice. 

The same network that keeps bad deals off your table is what puts good ones on it. The best founders run this play on me too. 

Tundra Angels once invested in a company called EVEN. It is a music tech platform that has infrastructure that allows musical artists to go direct to fan. EVEN is taking the music industry by storm, so much so that in February 2026, EVEN announced a multi-year partnership with Universal Music Group so that UMG artists can go direct to fan before going onto streaming platforms. 

When I first encountered Mag in July 2024, we had an initial conversation. The first chat went well, and we scheduled a second one the following week. During that next stretch of several days, unknown to me at the time, Mag quietly cross-checked me with three of his own VC investors. Mag told me on the second conversation, "I spoke to Jennifer at VC 414 and Joe and Troy at gener8tor, all of them told me that Tundra Angels is legit, so that's why I'm having this conversation." 

Mag Rodriguez from EVEN, wasn't looking for any net new investors. He told me that he had one or two investors that would take over the rest of the round if it came down to it. 

But Mag wanted a network of partners. Once he did his own asymmetric intelligence to confirm from the three contacts above that Tundra Angels was a great partner to have, he was bought in. 

Tundra Angels is invested in EVEN in August 2024. Click here to read our deep dive on Why Tundra Angels Invested in EVEN.

Here is the takeaway:

✅ The same network that gives investors intel to the deals we should pursue or not gives founders the intel they seek as to why you should be an investor of choice. ✅

As an individual investor, I will acknowledge that is more difficult to get asymmetric intel because you are basically going through the front door with the startup founder. 

I also acknowledge that for an individual investor, it's sometimes hard to know who the startup founders "neighbors" are. You can't exactly ask the company directly because they'll just provide contacts they know will speak about them with the most enthusiasm. 

The ideal contact is somebody who has the same investment evaluation criteria and yet is totally unbiased. Not even someone that has invested before in the company. But rather, someone that has an inside track, an angle, asymmetric network intelligence. 

I will call out that plugging into an established network plugs the investor into that asymmetric intelligence layer immediately. 

Phone calls like the one I placed with Doug regarding Company Z, or the three that Mag placed regarding vetting out Tundra Angels, take years to earn. 

Metaphorically, there is a front-door story, and a story that the neighbors, those in the founders' inner circle know. 

Part of an angel investor's job is to move from a snapshot of a story to a panorama of a story - even if it requires an anonymous source. 

Here are some of the recent newsletter articles!