377 million hits at Google would suggest that many people are and for a variety of reasons.
The legitimate lookers are hunting for an angel investor or angel investors to help fund a business startup. Wikipedia defines them as follows:
An angel investor or angel (known as a business angel or informal investor in Europe), is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A small but increasing number of angel investors organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share research and pool their investment capital.
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Angels typically invest their own funds, unlike venture capitalists, who manage the pooled money of others in a professionally-managed fund. Although typically reflecting the investment judgment of an individual, the actual entity that provides the funding may be a trust, business, limited liability company, investment fund, etc.
Angel capital fills the gap in start-up financing between "friends and family" (sometimes humorously called "friends, family, and fools") who provide seed fundung, and venture capital. Although it is usually difficult to raise more than a few hundred thousand dollars from friends and family, most traditional venture capital funds are usually not able to consider investments under US$1–2 million. Thus, angel investment is a common second round of financing for high-growth start-ups, and accounts in total for almost as much money invested annually as all venture capital funds combined, but into more than ten times as many companies (US$25.6 billion vs. $26.1 billion in the US in 2006, into 51,000 companies vs. 3,522 companies).
Wikipedia goes on to cite the growing number of angel investors and networks:
According to the Center for Venture Research, there were 234,000 active angel investors in the U.S. in 2006. Beginning in the late 1980s, angels started to coalesce into informal groups with the goal of sharing deal flow and due diligence work, and pooling their funds to make larger investments. Angel groups are generally local organizations made up of 10 to 150 accredited investors interested in early-stage investing. In 1996 there were about 10 angel groups in the U.S.; as of 2008 there are over 300, with a roughly equal number in all other countries combined; these groups accounted for approximately 10,000 individual angel investors in 2008. The more advanced of these groups have full time, professional staffs; associated investment funds; sophisticated web-based platforms for processing funding applications; and annual operating budgets of well over US$250,000. A recent development, particularly in North America, has been the emergence of networks of angel groups, through which companies that apply for funding to one group are then brought before other groups to raise additional capital.
One of those networks I've been recently turned onto can be found here and might be worthy of some perusing, especially if you're one hoping to find an angel or angels who might just set the course toward cutting our dependence on Arab oil.
That'd be some change I'm hoping for.
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