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AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

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Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on the methodology for how you pick companies? Does AngelList act like its own VC internally?

The fund invests in a subset of syndicated deals. About half of them historically. The investment team consists of experienced investors including Naval (my co-founder). Details here https://angel.co/access-fund

That's a nice advantage you have going -- normally access to the best deals is hard to come by, but by providing the tools by which stand out individuals can achieve leverage in their own deal making through syndication (you're both a technology provider and a channel marketing partner to them), you get their deal flow in return.

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#23

You can't even raise money on AngelList. It's just yet another shitty (okay, decent) jobs site. Why the hell AngelList can't create Kickerstart-for-Startups after all these years and significant funding is beyond comprehension. 1. Have startups fill out a YC-like applications. 2. Get investors to write the good checks. If AngelList can't do this then it doesn't need to exist.

The simple answer is "because laws".

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#24
post #5

Weird article. AngelList is raising money to make new investments and reports an unrealized 46% IRR, and that somehow makes for a gloomy story.

If it bleeds it leads. If it doesn't bleed make it sound like it does. Positive articles get no clicks.

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#26
this is absolutely ridiculous. there is next to no seed funding in existence. Let me tell you how the seed market for startups is: imagine you had a orchard, right, but instead of apples it grew dollar bills, and you just had to water them or they wouldn't grow. Under this scenario a guy with acres of dollar-tree bills could not get funding to water them with some kind of farm equipment. That's the state of the startup world.

You read all those PG essays about not dying? About bootstrapping? Well because it turns out the only way to capitalize a typical startup is to stand in front of your dollar-bill tree and urinate. Or organize some kind of free sporting event with the side effect of making people go piss on your trees. Then 97% of your trees die except the 5 you pissed on, but you can take them to the bank and next season repeat. That's how bad startup seed funding is.

You could not literally fund money growing out of thin air.

I sometimes think that the government should step in and fund these things (after all, even Tesla got gov't grants.) Because the private market sure as #@$% isn't.

EDIT:

This is already at -2 but I am keeping it without altering a word, because the downvoters are wrong and uninformed (or don't understand the analogy), and I am right and well-informed, also it's a good analogy. It's not even close. Here is an example of someone in Europe describing this precisely:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12198883

Notice the words "With a product like that, the second thing that we didn't expect was that we tripped the "too good to be true" sensor everywhere, raising doubts." (you might have to click parent from the comment I linked.)

It's not as bad in silicon valley as it is in Europe. But it's not that far-off either. There is next to no seed funding in existence. This is a fact. Downvoting me won't change it. Now at -3 after posting this update. Still right. Still not changing a word.

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#27

I'm going to make a prediction. This isn't going to be popular, and it's only my opinion and doesn't constitute advice: This fund will not earn its investors a positive return.

Not a great prediction unless you give a time window, too. 50% within a month? Six months? a year?

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#28
post #2

Is seed funding or seed funding through AngelList falling?

This link is just e-commerce, but chatter is the phenomenon is across the board:

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/e-commerce-deals-drop-q2-201...

It's effectively Q4 of 1999 and I couldn't be happier.

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#29
post #7
post #5

Weird article. AngelList is raising money to make new investments and reports an unrealized 46% IRR, and that somehow makes for a gloomy story.

The real story is 46% unrealized returns on 2013 syndicate investments. Which is in the upper top quartile of VC. And A-List, a premium recruiting product for busy companies. That complements our free recruiting product with 180K active candidates. Down markets are a good time to invest, but we're not anticipating one. http://angel.co/returns http://alist.co

46% unrealized returns based on follow on round valuations. Take that as you wish.

Re: AngelList Braces for Rainy Days as Startup Seed Funding Falls

#30
post #27

I'm going to make a prediction. This isn't going to be popular, and it's only my opinion and doesn't constitute advice: This fund will not earn its investors a positive return.

Not a great prediction unless you give a time window, too. 50% within a month? Six months? a year?

Thanks. I simplified the statement.
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