While these may be democratic developments, they’re also as sure a sign of a bubble as any we’ve seen. Opening the floodgates to more angel investment doesn’t mean there will be a greater number of successful startups; it simply means more money will come in at the very top of the funnel. More startups get funded, but a smaller percentage of them survive and pay off. We’re back to net-exacerbated winner-takes-all extremes. Under the pretense of individual empowerment, unsophisticated investors enter a market where good information is even scarcer than it is on Wall Street. True, they have proxied their participation to more experienced investors, but those investors are now competing to find winners in an even more crowded marketplace. The more authority amateur investors gain over the placement of their funds, the more likely they are to be exploited as the lowest levels in new pyramids.