UC San Diego

The entrepreneur figures centrally in understandings of contemporary societies. Often left unexamined is its necessary corollary, the angel investor: an amateur financier who invests not just money, but self. This dissertation shows how specific financial instruments and corporate forms work to turn the uncertainty of early-stage business into a terrain where people make friends, hone knowledges, and take joy in “irrational” expenditure. While angel investing has traditionally been an elite pursuit, recent U.S. securities deregulation has encouraged its widespread uptake through internet platforms, a process which has encountered frictions. My analysis demonstrates that financialization proceeds not only through the expansion of anonymous markets and powerful institutions, but also through affective ways of knowing, doing, and relating. In doing so, I make visible a new way that capitalism accommodates critiques of perceived lacks — and in the process transforms what capitalism itself is.