tom mcinerney

tom mcinerney

Image by Candice Navi

In a year upended by crisis after crisis — the ongoing pandemic, the climate emergency, an insurrection in the capital — tech startup financing is not just bouncing back but altogether booming, and Los Angeles-based angel investors are a big part of that equation.

Angels usually take a stake in an emerging business using their own funds, before institutional investors are willing to throw more substantial resources behind an idea. Often, they start off as entrepreneurs or engineers themselves.

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For Tom McInerney, a Los Angeles-based angel investor who has sunk cash into the likes of Bird, Tala, and Uber, the Coronavirus has changed the way he does business. He's stopped in-person meetings and on Monday pulled his three-year-old out of school for at least two weeks.

The family is on day four of quarantine in their Santa Monica home. And, he's done some basic preparations — buying masks and going to stores for what he's calling "pre-corona" food because it's not handled by humans. "This is extreme, and I know this is extreme," he told dot.LA. McInerney is an entrepreneur before he started investing in startups, and began his career as a software engineer at Apple and Sony.

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