Arched eyebrows, shrugged shoulders, and head shakes were frequently displayed by Angel investor David Tisch at the 18th Annual Venture Capital and Private Equity conference held at Harvard Business School recently.

Part of a panel focused on Angel investing, Tisch is a New York City based Angel, and managing Director of the Tech Stars program in the Big Apple. When he heard comments from his co-panelists that seemed unaligned with his web 2.0 style of carpet bomb seed investing, Tisch's body language was far from subtle.

Clashing not just in investing ideology but in appearance as well, Tisch showed up unshaven, wearing scruffy jeans, and donning a cap fit for a hip-hop artist. His panel cohorts like David Verrill (Boston Angel Investor) and Brent Grinna (Entrepreneur) were significantly less casual in sartorial expression. Texas investor Morris Miller showed up in suit and tie, a rarity for a guy controlling purse strings.

You could say it was "old school" Angel meets young Turk, as Tisch rallied off a number of the dozens of startups he has invested in, some of which were done without meeting the entrepreneur. He also proclaimed his intent to invest in a remarkable 35-50 startups over the next year, with an average check size of $50K.

As Tisch described his aggressive approach to quickly doing deals, the bemused looks of Verrill and Miller, spoke volumes. Both seasoned businessmen, Verrill and Miller obviously perceived Tisch as an articulate, but quixotic neophyte, who was doomed for failure with his bulging portfolio of startups.

Miller, who favors a more traditional investment style than Tisch, wasn't afraid to offer harsh critiques of Venture Capitalists. Currently operating Sequel Ventures in San Antonio, Miller was a founder and CEO of Rackspace, now a publicly-traded company with a $7 billion market cap.

Miller stated the only valuable thing a VC ever provided him in his startup experience was helping him land a meeting with the VP of Business Development of Oracle. Other than that, he proclaimed VCs offered zero added value in his career.

Verrill, whose Hub Angel group was an early investor in Zipcar, echoed Miller in stating that he would be happy to carry a startup through successive investment rounds, without relying on VCs to help.

The Angel investing salon was just one of a number of panels held at the conference. A healthcare Venture Capital panel, deftly hosted by Rob Jevon of Boston Millenia partners, touched on a wide range of subjects-- Obama care, monopolization of healthcare by a small number of chronic users, and the graying of America-- amongst others.

As none of the panelists (which included Jared Kesselheim of Bain Capital, Theresa Tribble of SynapDx, and Glen Giovannetti of Ernst and Young), were particularly headstrong in voicing their opinions, Jevon's quick wit, pithy interjections, and pop quizzes were quite refreshing. Jevon offered Massachusetts based Athena Healthcare as a healthcare business model he was decidedly bullish on.

Other panels included Latin American investing, Secondaries, Energy investing, Distressed and Special Situations, and investments in Internet and Mobile services.

The latter salon featured principals from New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ascent. While all the panel members emphasized the relative simplicity and low capital costs for starting businesses these days, they were quick to point out that a web site is not a business. Finding great entrepreneurs that can build successful business models and steer companies to more mature phases is rare. And Patrick Chung of New Enterprise couldn't help mentioning that Harvard MBAs don't have an extraordinary record leading startups. He also continued his thoughts by adding that the number of VCs who possess sparkling investment track records, is really quite small.

Held in three buildings of Harvard's lovely business school campus, the event moved seamlessly from breakfast, to keynote, to panels, on to lunch, another keynote address, more panels, and a final keynote.

There were a lot of young faces amongst the attendees, many HBS students, but also business school students from Bentley, MIT, BU, and other local schools. Attendees of Chinese, Russian and Indus origin predominated. Lawyers, entrepreneurs and other professionals were sprinkled throughout the audience. Gray hair was rare.

The lunchtime keynote featured British big-hitter, Guy Hands, who leads Terra Firma (14 billion Euros invested). Hands, started his speech with a little autobiography, informing us of his often traumatic formative schooling years in England. Written off by headmasters as slow and unpromising, Hands proved to be a difficult student.

Now worth over 100 million pounds, Hands is amongst the richest Britons. While he believes that the UK is in relatively good shape financially, he forecasts it will take the Eurozone many years to recover from the current sovereign debt crisis in Greece.

Super PE heavyweight, Daniel D'Aniello of Carlyle ($148 billion in assets), finished off the event with a closing keynote address that was chalk full of slides covering various metrics of the Private Equity industry. While D'Aniello believes good days are ahead, he nonetheless seemed nostalgic for the pre-2008 days of heady deal making, a golden age of PE returns unlikely to ever be witnessed again.