Le AngelList Blog
A blog about AngelList. For startup advice, see Venture Hacks.
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Finding people on AngelList
Last week, we showed you how entrepreneurs can use the new investor picker filtering features to limit visibility to their startup profile.
We forgot to mention that anyone with an AngelList account - investors, entrepreneurs, all users - can take advantage of these features to find new people to follow. It’s all in the redesigned “People” section. There, you’ll find the same filtering goodness that we blogged about last week: filters for role, people, markets and locations. Check it out.
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Announcing a new way for entrepreneurs to pick investors
Every situation is unique. Some entrepreneurs want their startup to be visible to as many investors as possible. Others want to focus on a few specific investors with specific interests. We aim to cover both of these situations, and every one in-between, so we’ve just released the first redesign of our new and improved investor selector.
Perhaps the best way to explain the value of this new investor selector is through a real life use case. Here at AngelList, Nivi has become famous for his inside-out t-shirts, so famous, in fact, that we get swamped with email requests from members of the AngelList and Venture Hacks communities asking to buy Nivi-T’s. The AngelList team has decided to ride this tsunami of demand and pivot our business toward the fashion world. To do this, we need to make connections with people who can help us succeed in this exciting new direction.
To get started, I go to our AngelList startup profile. Down in the restricted information section, I can see the number of users who have visibility. I click edit …
From here, I can either target all users, or a set of users I select. I click “Edit” near the “Visible only to investors I select” option…
Now I’m presented with the new investor selector. The interface has a set of filters on the left, and a sortable table of people matching those filters on the right. I can see at the top the total number of people who have been selected.
One thing that comes to mind in contemplating our new inside-out t-shirt business is that I want as few people to know about this as possible. So the first thing I do on the investor selector is “Select None”. To double check that this really worked, I can see at the top of the screen that the total number of people selected has been set to zero. Nice.
Now I get to work on the filters. We’re at a pretty early stage in this new fashion venture, so I filter roles by “Angel” and “Seed Funds”. Next, we trust Jeff and Manu, so I’ll add them to our list of people filters. I filter markets to “Fashion” and, since we’re based in SF and it might be easier to explain our plans face-to-face, I set location to “San Francisco”. These filters result in a nice clean set of users that match our interests, our situation, and our trust network. I can Command-click (or Control-click) on each of the investors to learn more about them in separate browser tabs. Just about done…
From here, I “Select All” and check that all 11 people have been selected. I click “Done Selecting Investors” …
… and that’s it. My visibility settings now say that my startup’s restricted information is visible to 11 users. Now I’d better go and change the rest of our startup profile to get our pitch just right. Wish us luck.
We hope you like the new investor selector. Expect to see additional refinements as we learn more about how you’re using it, what’s working, what’s not, etc. Let us know what you think.
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Experimenting with a new home page
Most home pages try to sell you with marketing spin. We’re not fans of those kinds of home pages. We’d rather just show you the range of people and startups you can connect with by joining our community. And that’s what our new, experimental home page aims to do.
If you’re looking for investors, you can search by location, market (e.g. “mobile”), or by “who you know and trust”. Let’s say you’re a Seattle startup, with a location-based mobile app and you’ve seen Mixer Labs co-founder and GeoAPI creator, Elad Gil speak at a conference and think he’s a clever guy. The new home page lets you quickly filter through the AngelList community to find investors who may be a match for you. From there, you can drill down and learn more about each investor.
If you’re looking for startups, you can also search my location, market, and people. Let’s say you’re a New York-based investor, looking for opportunities in the advertising space, and you too have a fondness for Elad. The “Find Startups” section of the home page allows you to quickly filter through the universe of AngelList startups to the ones that match your interests.
So if you’ve been thinking about joining AngelList, we hope this new tool gives you enough of a view into our community to nudge you over the fence. Let us know what you think.
(PS: you have to be “logged out” to see this new home page)
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Discovering People To Follow
Last week, we launched a new personalized startup feed based on the people, locations and markets you follow. The problem is, if you don’t follow anyone or anything, you get a not-so-relevant set of startups in your feed.
Today we’re launching a new feature to help you build your follower graph and improve the personalized-ness of startups in your personalized feed — Recommended People. Milos has cranked out a relevance algorithm to surface people that may be interesting to you. You can quickly and easily follow (or not) these people, and over time, your startup feed will begin to reflect your rich follower graph.
In the coming days/weeks, we’ll be launching more features to help you build your follower graph and improve your startup feed. Keep your eyes peeled.
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One Email, 13 Awesome Startups
We know you’re busy. We respect your time and want to make sure that every communication we have with you is high-signal and to the point. To that end, we’re testing out a new digest email format, where you can get bite-sized nuggets of startups we think you might be interested in. See something you like? Follow them, or take an intro. Let us do the work of connecting the right entrepreneurs with the right investors.
In case you haven’t heard, our friends over at AngelPad (no relation) just graduated their second class of 13 startups. We thought they were pretty amazing, so we emailed them out in our new digest format. Those of you who got the email, we hope you liked it (let us know what you think). Those of you who want to play with the cool kids, apply to be an AngelList investor.
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A New Way to Find Startups
AngelList has always been about connecting the right entrepreneurs with the right investors. Until now, most of these connections have been curated manually by the AngelList admins.
Thanks to lots of hard work (and late nights) from Milos, we’ve launched a new, personalized, automated startup feed for investors. The feed uses an algorithm that takes into account the people, locations and markets you follow. No two investors will have the same feed.
We hope this new feature will eventually take over our matchmaking duties. Ideally, startups should be visible to the most relevant investors as soon as they’re submitted.
We’re just getting started with the personalized feed. More changes to come based on your feedback. Let us know what you think.
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Joining AngelList as an Investor
If you’ve recently joined AngelList, you might have noticed a wizard that walks you through the process.
We’ve also launched a new way to get your investor profile approved automatically. If you fit our normal investment criteria — accreditation, key investments, and a reasonably complete profile — and you get 3 approved investors on the site to vouch for you, you’ll be approved automatically. These references can be through either email or Twitter. If 3 approved investors follow you on Twitter — and you meet the aforementioned criteria — you’ll be approved instantly.
Pro Tip: If you’re still waiting for approval, you can go to http://angel.co/references and request for references; we recommend at least 7 just to be sure you get responses. While you’re at it, be sure to spruce up your profile too!
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Faster Startup Processing with HTML Emails
Investors on AngelList tell us that they love our emails about new startups.
Andy and I just launched a new email design that should help speed up their startup email processing. The new design breaks out the startup’s product, traction, and team information, making it much easier for investors to quickly scan and make decisions about whether to take an intro.
Here’s what the email looks like. Let us know what you think. We hope you like it.
PS. Thanks to Dave Lifson of Postling for letting us use his startup’s profile (with some sections redacted)!
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A New Profile Page for Investors
Yesterday, Josh launched a set of features to help entrepreneurs connect with investors. Today, we’re giving investors a little love by launching a streamlined profile page.
The old profile page had lots of information that many of you didn’t find useful. With the new design, we’ve boiled the profile down to the essentials, giving users a clear, concise view of how investors can help, and their areas of interest.
We’ve also heard that many investors would like to use the profile page as their online resume or virtual business card — “Look me up on AngelList” — but the old profile page didn’t do a great job of showcasing their track record. With the new design, we’re taking our first steps toward making your angel.co address your online resume. Accredited investors who have an association with an AngelList startup — either investor, advisor, or team member — will now automatically see up to four sample startup associations on their profile page. We’re auto-generating your “tombstones”. At this time, this new feature has a few limitations. Only accredited investors can see other accredited investors’ startup associations (i.e. the general public or entrepreneurs can’t see them). Also, investors don’t have control over which four startups will appear.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out more features to give you control over this new tombstones section. We hope you like it.
Update! We’ve launched a public version of tombstones. If you’ve publicly declared your investment in a startup on AngelList, we’ll publicly display it.
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Engaging with Investors: Part 1
Entrepreneurs are always asking us, “What can I do now?” You’ve signed up, filled out your profile and bugged your investors and advisors to endorse it. Now what?Today we’re announcing the first in a series of features that will allow you, the entrepreneur, to engage with interested investors, instead of waiting for them to engage with you.If an investor follows your startup, you may send them a short introduction. You’ll find the tools to do so on the investor’s profile page. The investor will receive an email containing your intro and has the option to reply through AngelList.Stay tuned — we’ll soon be rolling features that will allow you to engage with second-degree connections.
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