Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
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Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#2In other words, it pays to be the pretty girl in the room. The fact that the underlying product, business, and people did not change highlights how most venture deal flow is filtered by relying on relativistic gauges of peer interest. It's pretty sad, honestly. Of course, not all are like this, for example YC and other programs with formalized processes.
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#3That is incredibly good advice. Thanks!
Excite them about the Market so they are intrigued about the product.
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#4It pays to pitch in person and connect with people for real. That's what I got from the article. And having traction helps win the in-person pitch.
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#5Did you guys get any writeups prior to Gigaom? Was is the case that you had lots of customers but just not a lot of glamour?
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#6In other words, it pays to be the pretty girl in the room. The fact that the underlying product, business, and people did not change highlights how most venture deal flow is filtered by relying on relativistic gauges of peer interest. It's pretty sad, honestly. Of course, not all are like this, for example YC and other programs with formalized processes.
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Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#7In other words, it pays to be the pretty girl in the room. The fact that the underlying product, business, and people did not change highlights how most venture deal flow is filtered by relying on relativistic gauges of peer interest. It's pretty sad, honestly. Of course, not all are like this, for example YC and other programs with formalized processes.
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Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#8Hey, this is Nivi from AngelList. I am very happy for Stormpulse and I'm glad to answer any of your questions here.
A couple things:
1. We're getting out of the "gatekeeper" business as quickly as possible. Over 70% of the intros on the site are now driven by code and community -- not us. It took a lot longer than we thought it would. We're working on the remaining 30%.
2. We don't think of it as "applying" to AngelList any more. We think of it as creating a startup profile. Applications made sense when we reviewed and distributed every startup. Now startups create profiles and they live on AngelList well before and after they raise money. For example: http://angel.co/42-floors
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#9In other words, it pays to be the pretty girl in the room. The fact that the underlying product, business, and people did not change highlights how most venture deal flow is filtered by relying on relativistic gauges of peer interest. It's pretty sad, honestly. Of course, not all are like this, for example YC and other programs with formalized processes.
We did change by committing to B2B, but insofar as we didn't change the foundational product, team, or market, you are correct. Which is why I call it a hack -- doing what it takes rather than what you think is important.
Re: Hacking AngelList (or "social proof")
#10So, our fault for not having caught it the first time. But the reason is more innocuous than you might think. On a busy day, we can get 50-100 startups showing up. That's a lot of applications to read - so we run an algorithmic filter to decide what to even look at. My guess is that your initial pitch didn't make it past the filter. The second time did, but not because you had a ton of offline traction with press and investors, but because you had a referrer who's known to the community - Joshua Baer. Yes, that's a bit of social proof (knowing an entrepreneur who's respected in the community) but not a particularly high bar. We'll try and do better in the future, and meantime, congratulations!