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AngelList: The World’s First On Demand VC-as-a-Service Platform

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beGobal Panel with Kevin Laws1

[Disclaimer: BootstrapLabs is an investor in AngelList and we have two syndicates, BootstrapLabs Syndicate and BootstrapLabs A+ Syndicate with Gil Penchina]

Last week I had the good fortune to find myself interviewing Kevin Laws, the COO of AngelList just a few days after they had launched a series of announcements that sent tremors through the entire startup and venture investment ecosystems:

  • Launched CSC Upshot: a new $400M seed fund dedicated mostly to early stage startups and syndicated deals on AngelList; which comes in addition to the existing Maiden Lane’s $25M fund launched in April 2014
  • Opened-up its backend infrastructure to offer “SPV as a Service” for angels and VCs interested in capturing pro-rata and/or additional carry on their best deals, across stages
  • Pushed its iOS App for its “joblist” marketplace

First of all, let’s briefly cover what came out of my fireside chat:

BL_KL_beGlobal_2015

  • AngelList is trying hard to stay in love with the problem they set out to solve when they first launched: “How do we help founders (globally) focus on what matters most, which is building their company and products, and spend less time fundraising?” You can sense that they have made this problem a core value at AngelList.
  • We argued that cross-border angel investing would not be possible without online platforms like AngelList, bringing both sides together (founders and angels), yet maybe more importantly without a trust & expertise based syndication model that aligns everyone’s interest, removes significant friction in the decision process (“emotional friction”) and ultimately building technology and processes to close the transactions (“physical friction”). Among the new stats shared by Kevin during our talk, he said that 10% of the capital invested online on AngelList was from outside Silicon Valley, while only 3% of completed fundraising online was for companies outside of the US. The new fund will definitely give a huge boost to the foreign capital percentage number above, unless they classify it as a US fund, event though it is backed 100% by Chinese capital.
  • Kevin placed the number of startups on AngelList at approximately 300,000 with  30,000 or 10% of them being in fundraising mode at any one time. In one sense, the odds of being “discovered” on AngelList are much better than they were in the Apple Store as of June 2015. There were over 1.5M apps, but the syndication of your round by a well known angel investor in Silicon Valley remains your best shot to stand out (kind of your equivalent to being featured by “Apple” in the store). The interesting bit for me was that this was still holding true for foreign companies trying to fundraise on AngelList. Kevin used the example of Descomplica, a Brazilian online education startup that raised $5M in February 2014 from Social+Capital, and used a syndicate led by my friend Lee Jacobs, a local angel investor with ties to Brazil, to ignite the fundraising on AngelList. Lee was also the very first to do a syndicate on AngelList so he gets pioneers’ points in my book :). Kevin also makes a very important point on the video below…you can invest anywhere but you might not be able to get your money back everywhere! Let us not forget that over 80% of technology M&A deals happen in Silicon Valley (buyer or seller is located there) and the last time I checked, corporate sales were responsible for 95% of the return of capital for VCs.

You can find a “meerkat” version of the interview here for now and I will upload a professional version from beGlobal as soon as it becomes available.

Now on with my two cents on their recent announcements:

CSC UPSHOT FUND

Some dubbed it the world’s largest seed fund and it sure is an impressive amount, but read the fine print. You realize that the investment thesis is broader…you are talking about investing in top startups (based on their metrics and syndicate leads) not just in Silicon Valley, but globally with the ability to do pro-rata and access later stage opportunities too (which are now facilitated even further due to their new SPV product). As I mentioned on stage, it takes a “Chinese billionaire” to have the humility to say “I do not have access to Silicon Valley deal flow, nor may I have the skills to vet it, but I sure can get some of the smartest people in the business to discover, vet, and syndicate some of their best deals for me, as well as secure access to follow-on funding via pro-rata rights and SPVs.” I am convinced that many institutions and family offices that invest in venture have been asking themselves why they did not think of it before, how maybe they just needed a lead to follow.

 

FREE ONLINE SPVs FOR ANGELS & VCs SYNDICATING LATER STAGE ROUNDS

This part did not grab the headlines, but this is probably the submerged part of the iceberg in my own opinion. By opening up its backend infrastructure and making these online SPVs free for Angels and VCs ($10K admin fee is spread among the LPs and AngelList does not charge any carry), AngelList is getting 3 very significant benefits:

  • they are getting all the LP contacts
  • they are accelerating the growth of their funds under management, and  
  • last but not least, they are capturing performance and return data at the source

This is by far the most significant announcement AngelList made that day for the future of AngelList.


“JOBLIST” iOS APP

If fundraising is among the top pain point of founders, recruiting talent is probably way up there as well, so it is only natural that AngelList spends a significant amount of time and capital improving its job marketplace product. It will also over time become a very strong competitive advantage and barrier to entry as “startup” skills and know-how are in very high demand across the world. There is also a very natural and synergistic relationship between fundraising and hiring since most $ startups raise goes to hiring more talent!

At BootstrapLabs we ask all our portfolio companies to create and maintain an up to date AngelList profile as a way of communicating with their stakeholders, including future employees.

Thank you to Kevin and the team at beGlobal for providing me with the opportunity!

So long and happy investing.

 

Presentation used by AngelList for their PR announcement

 

About Ben Levy

Twitter | LinkedIn

BL ProfileBen is the co-founder of BootstrapLabs, a Venture Investment Company that invests capital, experience, and skills into disruptive software companies from around the world, and helps their founders relocate to Silicon Valley to build BIG. Born in France and living in Silicon Valley for the past 17 years, Ben is a repeat entrepreneur who launched, built, and exited two startups in the financial technology space, one to Mergent, and another one to SecondMarket, who was recently acquired by NASDAQ.

He has also helped founders raise over $300M of capital from Venture Capitalists and Private Equity Investors and closed $5B worth of technology M&A transactions as an investment banker earlier in his career. He is a frequent speaker on innovation, investing, technology, entrepreneurship and globalization.

 

Learn how to be a successful Angel Investor

Learn how to be a successful Angel Investor!

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Learn how to be a successful Angel Investor

The venture world is changing profoundly and over the next few months we will see a huge increase in “big” seed stage (Pre Series A) deals.

As Ben Levy, co-founder of BootstrapLabs, mentioned in his recent blog post “Seed is the New Series A”, we will over time see more and more seed stage investors creating syndicates and inviting fellow angels to co-invest in their deals.

The number of angel deals, crowdfunding platforms and micro VCs is growing dramatically.

Number of active Micro-VCs

Number of active Micro-VCs

*the majority of these funds of this size are closed without any traditional institutional LP backing. Source: CBInsights; graphic BootstrapLabs.

Learning the ins and outs, strategies, and best practices needed to be a successful angel investor is not easy, but here are a few steps you can follow in order to get started in this exciting new world of “private is the new public”.

Angel investing is often considered by many people to be like a poker game, but with the new market structure and the emerging models of crowdfunding, I believe that Angel investing is becoming more of a team game than a solo gambling endeavor.

One of the most important steps for an Angel Investor is gaining access to quality investment opportunities and spreading their risk by diversifying investments (into a minimum of 10/15 deals if you are active and closer to 30 if you are passive). To invest in 10 good deals you should meet and evaluate at least 100 startups, and this is not easy thing if you are doing angel investments on the side!

You should probably not make 10 investments at once or in a short time span by the way…each deal you invest in will teach you something, and you definitely want your later deals to benefit from your early ones.

This is also why joining a syndicate on a crowdfunding platform or investing alongside or in a Venture Capital fund is recommended. Participating in deals with experienced and expert investors will reduce your risk and save you the time of doing due diligence.

In any case, if you have not already done so, the first thing you need to do to become an angel investor is to verify your Accredited Investor status for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is to make sure the startups do not get into hot water with the SEC for selling private securities to “naive” investors.

To be an Accredited Investor you need to be eligible with one of the following criterias:

  • Individuals with annual income over $200K (individually) or $300K (household) over the last 2 years and an expectation of the same this year
  • Individuals with net assets over $1 million, excluding their primary residence (unless more is owed on the mortgage than the residence is worth)
  • An institution with over $5 million in assets, such as a venture fund or a trust
  • An entity made up entirely of accredited investors

For more information read the SEC documentation.

What Angel Investing means?

Angel investing is buying equity (or convertible securities that can be converted into equity) in a startup company at the earliest stage of a company’s lifecycle. These investments are high risk but also potentially the most profitable since investors benefit from lower valuation and their relatively small check still buys a decent amount of ownership. On that note, angel investors should not aim to “own” or “control” a business if they want to ensure the long term success of their investment. If you should feel you have to do this for the company to succeed, you might be better off investing in another company altogether.

Why is access to good deals limited today?

Because good deals are mostly funded by people who do angel investing as a full time job, and includes a few friends in their trusted network, the financing round will be filled very quickly and will be closed before anyone else even knows about it.

Today, competition is very high in this space and the majority of good startups are participating in accelerator programs and/or having their deals syndicated on platforms like AngelList by expert seed stage angel investors and even Micro-VCs.

Why do startups need Angel Investors?

To pay for their initial expenses and to provide capital to build the first version of their product. Also for many startups, finding an Angel Investor is a good way to prove that their endeavor is or will be valuable. Validation by expert and successful Angel Investors is considered by other angels or seed stage VCs as almost a requirement these days to rise above the noise level.

From a startup’s perspective, it is very important to have respected and value-add Angel Investors on their cap table at the beginning of their journey, especially when the time to raise another round arises, and it will always be sooner than a founder would like to admit.

What does the typical Angel Investment Strategy look like?

As described above, one of the most important steps to becoming a successful Angel Investor is having access to good deal flow. Angel Investing is a high risk investment and you have to invest in at least 10 deals (would recommend even more with small checks) over time in order to diversify your risk.

While the typical Angel Investment is between $5K to $25K; the return of a successful Angel investment can be up to 500x but you will also face the very real fact that 50% of the investments you make will have a low or even zero return, as many startups fail.

To reduce your risk and increase your chance of investing in the next unicorn at an early stage (500x return) as a new Angel Investor, the best thing to do is to participate in deals with other trusted investors or invest a bigger check into a VC to start building your network and knowledge in this space!

Learn more about BootstrapLabs Syndicate here

I will publish more articles regarding this topic soon, so if there is anything you would like to add or ask, please contact me @luigicongedo !

Also I would like to recommend this NY Times article to learn how the world of angel investing has changed in Silicon Valley in the last decade.