This is very scary and serious stuff...

How the group can act together to keep out new angel investors invading the market and driving up valuations.

TechCrunch (specifically editor Michael Arrington) breaks this story. WOW...

As an entrepreneur, I can't tell you how much this scares me. The current start-up ecosystem works because of entrepreneurs being able to secure funding. Angel investing was a boon to this new crop of start-ups where it no longer costs millions to start a company, essentially expanding the universe of potential investors beyond just VC firms. Without this pipeline of funding, lots of start-ups will not be able to grow and flourish.

On another note, the comments section of many TC articles usually contains a good amount of people bitching and moaning about how TC doesn't do real news and how Arrington just rants and raves. To these people I say, STFU and GAFG. Yes, the tone of many TC posts are informal and don't read like an AP piece. But I believe that only blogs like TC can get access to write stories like this for this particular industry of ours. If I have to get the occasional airline or iPhone rant, fine by me.