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Utsav Somani bids goodbye to AngelList; launches exclusive club for startup founders Offline

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AngelList

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AngelList has a very good set of blog posts about recruiting, remote work, etc. I think that not a lot of people aware of them, so I decide to form a collection of it and share with readers. Hacker Noon in order to make this article long, less boring and show you that I actually read that articles myself (who knows maybe you don’t trust me) — i’m pushing the most cool quotes from that articles in order to give you some teaser. Reading this articles was a good time investment for me. Hope you will enjoy them too. Btw, at ( ) we have a lot of cool conversations about future of automatization, problems, that facing remote teams and a lot more! Sign up and take part in our conversations! HackerNoon forum https://community.hackernoon.com/ Please don’t tell me that you looking for a startup tech job or working at someone and you’re not at AngelList. Linkedin? It’s for grannies. What Startups Really Mean By “Why Should We Hire You?” …and other non-technical questions. Don’t think of this question as a test of your competency or resourcefulness. It’s designed to gauge whether you have the nerve to withstand the stress and uncertainty of a startup. “I didn’t get along with a coworker.” Link: https://angel.co/blog/what-startups-really-mean-by-why-should-we-hire-you Why You Should Join A Regulated Startup “the rules that apply for low-friction or permission-less spaces can actually lead you in exactly the wrong direction.” In other words, if you “move fast and break things” in the financial sector, the SEC can throw you in jail. Link: https://angel.co/blog/why-you-should-join-a-regulated-startup Why Your Job Offer Was Rescinded — And How To Handle It As for finding your next job, get back on the horse and keep applying. As long as you didn’t burn any bridges with the recruiter, most will let you resume the interview process if its still ongoing. Link: https://angel.co/blog/why-you-should-join-a-regulated-startup 3 Obstacles Your CS Degree Won’t Prepare You For As it turns out, working in a language written more than 30 years ago is often easier than working around the spaghetti code another engineer wrote last summer. One, who began he career at a decades-old tech company, described the particular headache of deciphering a bug that was older than he was. The course colleges should add: Humans 302: Why They’re The Worst Sometimes Link: https://angel.co/blog/3-obstacles-your-cs-degree-wont-prepare-you-for Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work Is The Future …It’s going to be done through lengthy trials. It’s going to be done through new forms of evaluating whether someone can work remotely effectively.” “It obviously favors a certain kind of person — a younger person who is unattached, who wants to globe-trot and see cool new places, but often it’s way cheaper flying your team to this exotic location than it is to pay them a Bay Area salary.” Link: https://angel.co/blog/why-naval-ravikant-thinks-remote-work-is-the-future What To Do When You’re Faced With An Exploding Job Offer The shorter the expiration window, the worse the exploding offer. Remember, joining a new company is a commitment. You stop interviewing for other opportunities. You commit to spending most of your time each day with these people. You have to live, at least in the short term, with whatever compensation package you accept Link: https://angel.co/blog/how-to-deal-with-exploding-offers Why The Gender Pay Gap Gets Worse — Not Better — For Senior Engineers “Women negotiate less — and ask for less when they do try to negotiate — than men, and that’s due to a couple of reasons,” said Maya Raghu, director of workplace equality at The National Woman’s Law Center. Link: https://angel.co/blog/why-the-gender-pay-gap-gets-worse-not-better-among-senior-engineers Want To Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code The easier it is for outside engineers to understand your code, the more likely they are to contribute. Engineers today are less interested in parking their skills in a place and not being able to showcase them. They want to work in the open because it creates some visibility to them.” Link: https://angel.co/blog/want-to-recruit-better-engineers-open-source-your-code 30 Questions To Ask Before Joining A Startup “What progression do you envision for someone in this role?” You want a company that plans for your growth. “Does this role contribute to higher-level decisions?” The more responsibility you get out of the gate, the better. Link: https://angel.co/blog/30-questions-to-ask-before-joining-a-startup Naval Ravikant’s Guide To Choosing Your First Job In Tech “Pick a startup that is not totally raw. You can calibrate a little bit and (make your decision) heavily based on the quality of the team and the alumni,” Naval suggests. “Those are the people who are going to form your core network in the tech industry for the next decade.” “All returns in life, including in relationships, are from compound interest.” Link: https://angel.co/blog/naval-ravikants-guide-to-choosing-your-first-job-in-tech Why Naval Ravikant Hires Artists “You look for tinkering. You look for hobbies. You look for side projects… Real artists always have art projects going on the side. If someone is very, very good or is meant to be an entrepreneur, they’re probably going to have multiple entrepreneurial things that they’ve tried — not just one. “I would rather hire people who don’t fit. One thing I hate in hiring is when people are like, ‘Must have eight years experience in this, six years experience in that, must know JavaScript…’ A good person can pick up most things. A good engineer can pick up a new language. A good designer can pick up a new toolset. Link: https://angel.co/blog/why-naval-ravikant-hires-artists How To Switch Engineering Jobs — And Actually Like Your New Role There is no reason for engineers, in today’s market, to stay in a job they don’t want — and they know it. … in the role, he was able to see people’s lives improve every day because of his work. He described it as the happiest role of his career Link: https://angel.co/blog/how-to-switch-engineering-jobs-and-actually-like-your-new-role How To Recruit Talent — When You’re Competing With Giants Explaining your vision of success — and how it differentiates you from the rest of your market — refocuses the way candidates see your company. The best way to sell your culture is to explain what types of people succeed at your startup and also what types of people fail. Link: https://angel.co/blog/how-to-recruit-talent-when-youre-competing-with-giants Steve Blank: How To Keep Your Job As Your Startup Grows “I don’t get it, I did all this work, and everything was great. Why does anything have to change?” Link: https://angel.co/blog/steve-blank-how-to-keep-your-job-as-your-startup-grows Those Inflated Job Titles Aren’t Fooling Recruiters If you have a very senior-sounding title from a very small company, keep the title but also include the company’s size. When you list yourself as the former senior engineering lead for a five-person company, a recruiter can’t tell at a glance what your responsibilities and contributions actually were. Clarify that for them. Remember, your resume is your story, and it’s there to get you in the door. Tell the best story you can, and anticipate the questions it will raise in the reader’s — or in this case, the recruiter’s — mind. Link: https://angel.co/blog/those-inflated-job-titles-arent-fooling-recruiters Just a good article to cross the finish line How my Friend Got an Internship at Tesla After Only 8 Months of Coding “You have no idea. For a few hours, my desk was like five meters from Elon’s.” “No fucking way” I shouted. Link: https://hackernoon.com/how-my-friend-got-an-internship-at-tesla-after-only-8-months-of-coding-6578c32f3e77 Read more by Angel List Thanks! Read that article or I’ll delete your Facebook account!

AngelList blogs about work and people

Working with an syndicate is a great way to raise money and establish important connections for your company. But not every syndication is successful. Having syndicated 31 deals through our AngelList syndicate, Barbara Corcoran ( ), I would like to share what I have learned about what makes some deals more successful than others. And by “more successful,” I mean that they have generated more interest from our of backers and have therefore raised more money than other deals. AngelList Venture Partners www.Barbara.vc community 1. . Even though a syndicate lead will be asking you a lot of questions to determine if he or she wishes to invest in and syndicate your company, you should also be them to make sure their syndicate is a good fit for you in order to optimize your odds of success. What makes a syndicate a “good fit” for you? Here are criteria to consider: The first step is to identify the right syndicate for you interviewing a. The syndicate is large enough to raise the amount you will be allocating to it. Keep in mind that backers are not obligated to invest — on average, syndicates raise 20%-40% of the aggregate committed amount for any one deal. Ask the syndicate lead how many backers they have, how much money is backing the syndicate and how much they have raised for other companies. b. The syndicate has a portfolio of companies that may be good for you to network with. This is certainly not critical, but a nice benefit. We always look for synergies among our portfolio companies and opportunities for them to work together. c. The syndicate is not dedicated to a certain theme or stage (e.g. “drones” or “pre-IPO”) that is not a fit for you. d. The syndicate backers are well connected and can add value beyond money. e. A syndicate lead with some knowledge of the industry you’re in. f. A syndicate lead who will be a good representative of your company. Since the lead will be representing your company to the AngelList community, you want to feel comfortable that he or she will be a good ambassador. g. A syndicate with a good track record. I suggest reviewing their portfolio of syndicated companies and speaking with the founders of some of those companies to ask if they were happy with the process and if the lead and backers have provided any value after the close. I also suggest asking the lead how many deals they have syndicated unsuccessfully (i.e. didn’t raise enough to close) and why he or she thinks they failed. Ideally, you’d like to work with a syndicate that has successfully syndicated deals for several companies and provides value after the close. 2. . Provide as much information about your product, vision, KPIs, expansion plans, competition (and how you differentiate) and potential exit opportunities. This is a critical component to your success as syndicate backers will make their investment decision based primarily, and often exclusively, on the information contained on your profile page and in your deck. I realize that some companies are concerned about disclosing too much sensitive information in a semi-public forum (even when it will only be viewable by a select group of accredited investors). Work with your syndicate lead to determine a balance between providing enough information to optimize your raise and providing information that could be detrimental to the company if it got into the wrong (i.e. competitor’s) hands. After you have a deal with a syndicate, it is important to make sure that your company’s AngelList profile page and deck are as compelling and thorough as possible 3. In this message, you should introduce yourself, thank them for their support, share a few sentences about what your company does, provide some news about a recent positive development that is not included on the profile page or in the deck and encourage them to contact you directly with any questions. If you will be conducting a webinar for the backers as I suggest (see below), you should also invite them to attend the webinar and provide the day and time and a link to join. Immediately after the syndicate launch for your company, I suggest that you send an introductory message to all of the backers. 4. We have had great success with this and thus require every company we syndicate to host a webinar for our backers. These typically last for one hour with the first half dedicated to a review of the deck and the second half to answering questions from the backers. Be sure to record the webinar so you can send the link to those backers who were unable to attend. I highly recommend that you run a webinar for the backers within a few days of the syndicate launch. 5. Try to provide them with additional information about the company or respond to their concerns in order to enable them to make a more informed judgment about investing. Also, immediately respond to all backers who ask questions. I also suggest sending the link to your webinar recording to all backers who did not attend the webinar. I suggest that you reach out to certain backers and followers, specifically, those who are undecided and who have opted-out. 6. I also strongly recommend that you include requests for assistance from the backers. This could include requests for introductions to potential customers and new hires. You should also consider reaching out to directly the syndicate lead and to certain backers, especially when they have experience in the area you in which you need help. After the syndicate round has closed, you will benefit from sending backers consistent monthly investor reports containing a reasonable level of detail, including KPIs, product updates, expansion plans, new hires, etc. 7. Doing so may not always seem like a good use of your time, but I assure you that strengthening your relationships with backers will pay off in the long run. Always respond to questions or comments or offers to help from backers. I hope you find this information helpful. If you believe that Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners may be a good syndicate for you, feel free to message me on AngelList or LinkedIn. Phil Nadel is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners ( www.Barbara.vc ), one of the largest and most active AngelList syndicates. is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

7 Steps to a Successful AngelList Syndication

for Investors & Startups, by David E. Weekly , written mid-2016 Hi! I help run two separate syndicates on AngelList; (focused on drone tech) and (focused on applied deep learning). Many people are unfamiliar with how AngelList Syndicates work — what makes them similar and different to working with either individual angels, an “angel group”, or working with a traditional institution. This guide hopes to clarify that for you. If you’d like a basic primer in stocks and the like, I’d recommend my free as a resource. drone.vc neuron.vc venture capital startup Guide to Stocks & Options : I’m not a lawyer. None of the below should be constituted as legal or tax advice, for which you should seek the services of a licensed professional. The below was written with US investors investing in US-incorporated technology startups: rules, restrictions, and considerations may vary considerably from the below advice for other geographies. I don’t work for or represent AngelList and may have materially misrepresented their program. Investing in startups is dangerous. Also, don’t run with scissors. Disclaimers Galore Angels “Angels” are what we call people who invest their own money. The SEC puts restrictions around what kind of investments people can make if they’re not rich yet — to keep, say, grandparents from getting tricked out of their retirement savings by a huckster — so most angels need to be rich by . If you meet this bar, the SEC will consider you an . These definitions haven’t changed in a while, but when we talk angels, we’re not talking institutions, we’re talking individuals — humans. With motivations. And there are good and bad motivations to being an angel. the SEC’s bar accredited investor The first thing an investor should ask themselves is what they’re hoping to get out of their investments. If an angel is hoping to “get rich quick”, “help steer an early stage company” or even “get a front row seat into a company’s operations” by angel investing, they’re may well be disappointed with the process. Angels very rarely get special rights, like a Board seat or even observer rights. Angels that try to too aggressively interfere with a company’s operations get a bad name, and for good reason — you’ll likely hurt more than you’ll help. Good angels often have a broad portfolio of companies and act as a passive “service provider”, helping startups when they ask for it. , the “godfather” of Silicon Valley, pioneered this approach, meeting with huge numbers of companies, making quick decisions about investment, investing in a very large number of companies, and generally not asking for control/observation — there was just no way he’d have the time to sit on that many boards! While some derided this as “spray & pray” and prefer to see investment as “smart money” where companies receive both capital and active advice, Ron’s returns speak for themselves. Ron can get access to pretty much any deal because Ron has removed every reasonable objection you might have to taking his money. The returns you’ll realize are going to map to whether you are able to get in on the deals, likely ones where lots of other investors are vying for entry to the deal as well. If you establish a reputation for being helpful and easy to work with, you make it easier to get in on any deal you want. Ron Conway best Now lest I frame passive investors too passively, Ron would move mountains for a portfolio company that had a specific ask of him — even if you’d need to spend the first thirty seconds on a phone call reminding him that you were CEO of a company he invested in. ;) I’ll disclaim that Ron invested in my first company, PBwiki, and was a wonderful supporter. The portfolio approach is important from a returns perspective. It can be very difficult to predict which companies will do really well and which will flounder. A humble “ ” style approach is for an investor to admit they’re probably going to get this wrong a lot and so to have a wide range of bets in the hope that one will be a breakout hit. Investor returns are typically on an extreme power law curve — if one company does really well, it will do so well that it literally won’t matter what happened with any other company in your portfolio. So a good angel investor will seek to build to a portfolio of e.g. 30+ startups. Your probabilistic returns are much higher to make thirty $10k investments versus one $300k investment. Put another way, if your only involvement in angel investment is writing one check, you’re probably going to be disappointed with the outcome and conclude that angel investing isn’t for you. Pace yourself! Allocate a certain yearly budget for investment and seek to regularly make small bets. black swan Another good reason to be an angel investor is that you like meeting with founders, who can teach you about new industries, emerging best practices, and clever approaches to problem solving and teambuilding. Founder energy is fun and infectious and can inspire you. Finally, it’s great to give back. A lot of people in Silicon Valley (maybe most of them!) made it big when others “took a bet” on them and thus they want to “pay it forward” by blessing newcomers with capital, advice, and networking. This is one of the most powerful and poorly held secrets of Silicon Valley; I attribute it to the area’s hippy history. :-) Syndicates , a privately-held company in SF, offers a wide range of services to enable companies, individuals, and angels to connect. Startups can post jobs available, angels can seek companies to invest in, and companies can seek funding. One of the features AngelList has added in the past few years is the ability for an individual well-connected angel to create a syndicate to allow other angels access to deals the lead is participating in, on the same terms. Angel participants can “soft commit” to seriously consider funding companies alongside these influential angels. This has interesting follow-on effects: startups now have more motivation to meet with these “super angel” syndicate leads since they represent a collective of investors, which means these syndicates get more and better deal flow than they would as an unorganized group of individual investors. Over time, the size of such a syndicate may give an individual angel decision-making power equivalent to a traditional small venture capital firm with almost none of the typical investment overhead of a fund. Let’s walk through the math. AngelList If I wanted to be a syndicate lead, I’d announce “I’m planning on investing $10,000 of my own money in 3–4 companies a year”. I might find thirty friends who are each willing to tentatively commit to putting in $10,000 of their own money into such deals on the same terms as me. Now I’ve got $10k of my own money with $300k of other people’s money that I can offer for investment in a company. This obviously makes it much more interesting for a company to meet with me versus if I could have only cut them a $10k check. For those of you paying attention, you’ll note that the $300k is only committed. In reality, only ~60% of syndicate backers will actually close on a deal. So with $300k in syndicate backing, I can reasonably expect to offer $180k in funding to a company. tentatively When the syndicate lead finds a specific deal that they’re excited about, they agree on the terms of investment with the startup (“leading” the deal) or they join other investors who are investing in the company at the same time, on the same terms (“following”). They indicate the deal to AngelList, which triggers some AL folks reaching out to both the syndicate lead and startup to confirm terms and help the startup get their AngelList page into proper shape to “launch” the deal. Once the deal has been approved for launch by AngelList, it’s up to the syndicate lead to publicize. The lead then writes up why they were interested in this particular company and shares those thoughts and data confidentially with syndicate participants. Participating angels in the syndicate can then review the deal and decide if they would like to opt-in to the deal. An individual syndicate deal can only have up to 99 accredited investors participate; if 100 or more investors want to join, it will be up to the syndicate lead who they want to allow into the deal. Typically investors who choose to “pre-fund” their syndicate participation are first in line; these investors have to actively opt-out of deals. They’re followed by investors willing to invest larger amounts, e.g. $10k vs $5k, then everyone else. With the deal launched, AngelList sets up an escrow into which syndicate participants can ACH transfer or wire their funds, and collects electronic signatures from the startup, syndicate lead, and syndicate participants. AngelList charges a fixed $8k for the deal to manage all of the backoffice. So if in the above example there was a $180k syndicate raise, $8k of that would get paid to AngelList and $172k would be wired to the startup. AngelList creates a new Delaware LLC as a single-purpose corporate vehicle to make and manage the investment. The name of this LLC is typically a jumbled combo of the name of the syndicate and the name of the startup being invested in; in the case of ’s investment in , for instance, the entity created was called “AngelList-Prav-Fund, a series of AngelList-DrVc-Funds, LLC”. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. To make things even more fun, AngelList actually outsources the management of these LLCs to a company called . drone.vc PRENAV Assure Fund Management From the startup’s perspective it’s pretty good, since they only get new shareholders on their cap table; the syndicate lead, who makes their investment directly as an individual, and the LLC. So PRENAV got “David E. Weekly” as a shareholder as well as the above mouthful of an LLC. Because there is meaningful ongoing backoffice work that needs to be done for every shareholder a company has, minimizing cap table entries is a great time and money saver for startups. two Most of the deals I see use pretty vanilla terms: a (equity), a , or otherwise templated convertible notes (debt) with a clear cap and discount. I’ve heard a few stories of early stage investors being pretty badly abused with a SAFE note, so I’m gently nudging people towards using Series Seed, since it’s pretty easy for the startup and offers investors the safety of actual equity. Series Seed SAFE note The deal is only live for a fixed period of time, typically 20-30 days. This gives the lead enough time to discuss the deal with participants, gives investors a chance to ask questions (or come back from vacation!) and to wire their money in. I’ll note that for most deals, you’ll know within four days of launch about how well the deal will do. Here below are three real deals I closed with drone.vc. Note that committed capital can dip week to week if a prefunded investor chooses to opt out. Something to be aware of: AngelList has syndicate amplification funds like Maiden Lane and CSC Upshot that can further financially amplify a syndicated deal with significant traction. Typically these funds will make a go/no-go decision on investment in a few days. They are looking for deals that have strong “signal”, meaning several notable investors or firms are already participating in the deal beyond the syndicate. So a deal led by a syndicate with only syndicate members participating is unlikely to be able to access these funds. If the fund does decide to participate in a deal, they’ll come in at the same terms, through the syndicate vehicle. If you’re a syndicate lead, you’ll need to not only hype a company but also candidly disclose potential risks. It’s really important to do this thoroughly; if it can be shown that you knew about certain material risks to a startup’s success and didn’t disclose them to fellow investors, you could end up in hot water. Finally, you’ll need to disclose any variations — if the startup is actually run by your brother, if you have been given advisory shares, if you’re already a shareholder, if you’re getting a different deal than syndicate participants, etc. Needless to say, it’s best if your deal has no variations. Carry So far, so good, but you might ask what’s in it for the syndicate lead other than getting better deal exposure and getting to help their friends? A syndicate lead isn’t paid a penny of the $8k that goes to AngelList. Indeed, the only movement regarding their bank account is the outbound money being invested in the startup! The payout to a syndicate lead happens when a company invested in by the syndicate has a (e.g. someone buys the company or the company goes public). At this point, the shares held by the LLC get exchanged for cash. The cash that investors put in is returned to them and money returned to the LLC beyond funds invested is then called , which is basically the profit off of the investment. Of the carry, AngelList takes 5% and typically syndicate leads take around 15%. The total amount, e.g. 20%, is listed clearly on a syndicate’s page when investors sign up to the syndicate or a syndicated deal. liquidity event carry Thanks for reading this guide to AngelList Syndicates! Let me know if it was useful to you and/or what I got wrong at . Finally, if you’re an accredited investor in interested in drones, I’d love to welcome you to my syndicate; if into deep learning, . david@weekly.org drone.vc neuron.vc HN Discussion is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

The Mechanics of AngelList Syndicates

Tips from their talent team is most companies’ top need — and difficulty — but AngelList could make your life easier. The West coast has adopted for hiring, with founders at companies like Slack, Tinder, and Quora raving about it. Time for Boston to do the same. Hiring AngelList Last week, Dave Zohrob and Amit Matani from AngelList’s talent team, who talked about strategies for hiring great people using their platform. we hosted Their takeaways are in the slide deck below.

How to Hire on AngelList

Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work Is The Future It feels like the rise of remote works has been a top conversation in tech for years, but despite the enthusiasm and attention it receives, we’ve yet to turn the corner on making remote work a norm. AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant, however, says he thinks remote work’s time is coming. “It is probably going to be the single most important new category in hiring,” he says. When pressed further, he offered the following thoughts: On why traditional, on-premise work can be counter-productive “Nothing is going to replace in-person, human warmth and communication. When two humans are in a room next to each other, they communicate at a much higher bandwidth through all kinds of subtle, physical signals than they do over video. And even that’s much greater than over audio. This hidden, high-bandwidth human communication is only possible in person. “But you don’t need that all the time. When you’re sitting at your desk, you know what to do, and you just have work to crank it out, but your boss walks by, you’re suddenly going to have this high-bandwidth communication whether you like it or not. It’s going to suck a lot of energy out of you. Or maybe you’re not feeling super productive today, and you’d rather work on Saturday. You don’t get that choice. Yeah, you can not show up, and you might have a flexible work environment, but there’s still the social pressure of, ‘My desk is sitting empty while everybody else’s in the office.’” On why companies are hesitant to change to remote work “Companies pay lip service to it, but the best companies still are slow about it. They’re hesitant. And the reason they’re hesitant is because they’re basically saying, ‘How do I know this person is great? How do I evaluate, motivate, manage someone who’s remote?’ I think companies that are built as remote from the ground up, like Product Hunt and WordPress are, these companies know how to get productivity out of remote workers. “It’s sort of like how tech companies are designed from the ground up to attract, retain and motivate tech people. When you have a non-tech company trying to hire tech people, no matter how much money they spend, they can never seem to hire well. And the reason is that they’re not designed from the ground up for tech innovation. If you’re not designed from ground up to be remote, it gets hard. “So even though I think a lot of companies are saying they’re hiring remote, I wonder what percentage of the actual placements are remote placements. It’ll be a much smaller percentage, but I think that gap will close over time.” On why remote work is the future “Moving everybody into the Bay Area doesn’t scale. The Bay Area is way too expensive, and taxes are high. It’s not even the nicest quality of living for what you’re paying, and people have lives and families in other countries and other parts of the country. “The idea of remote work as a separate category will be gone within a decade or two. The tools still aren’t quite good enough, but they’re getting better by the day. “We’re going to see an era of everyone employing remote tech workers, and it’s not too far away. In fact, now’s the time to prepare for it. But I think in the meantime, the companies that are going to do the best job at it are the ones that are remote companies or that have divisions internally that are remote. It’s going to be done through lengthy trials. It’s going to be done through new forms of evaluating whether someone can work remotely effectively.” On where remote work is already catching on “Crypto is interesting because these crypto companies are open-source projects for the most part…and because it’s decentralized in nature. It’s kind of a global movement with mathematicians and cryptographers and hackers working on it. By its nature, it ends up being much more distributed, much more remote. “These are obviously very engineering-heavy cultures, and it’s easier to do engineering work remotely than other kinds, unfortunately, but that will change. But crypto companies also have a culture of meeting regularly in interesting locations. There’s always an interesting blockchain conference going on, so you find the one that’s in a nice spot where everybody wants to meet, and everybody flies in. “It obviously favors a certain kind of person — a younger person who is unattached, who wants to globe-trot and see cool new places, but often it’s way cheaper flying your team to this exotic location than it is to pay them a Bay Area salary.” Originally published at angel.co .

Moving Everybody into the Bay Area Doesn’t Scale

The beginning of your career is one of the hardest parts to navigate. By default, you’re at a disadvantage. You probably have little-to-no professional experience, you don’t know how to evaluate which company will be best for your career, and you likely don’t have much of a network to lean on. At the same time, your first job — especially in tech — can have an outsized impact on the rest of your career. “I’m reminded of a famous example with Facebook. Adam D’Angelo was CTO,” says AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant. “Here you have (someone in their early 20s) managing 30-year-old engineers. Some of that is accredited to Zuck for just recognising genius and promoting him up. And some of this is, it’s just like that at startups. Startups are much more merit-based, rather than seniority based.” If you’re just coming out of school, Naval guides, prioritize your career trajectory above all else and choose an environment where you can both build a strong network and rise through the ranks quickly. Evaluating whether a job offers both requires a framework, and Naval’s is extremely simple — and effective. A framework for choosing your first startup It can be hard to know what differentiates a great startup from something less exciting. “You don’t know what a rocketship really looks like,” Naval says. “You don’t know who to trust or who to believe.” Bridging this knowledge gap early on in your career requires two things: research and networking. For research, Naval recommends finding early-stage investors and looking into which companies they’ve cut checks to. “In (a program that gives founders funds to start angel investing), we now have about 25 really high-quality funded founders that have been going out and investing in very early-stage companies. That’s a powerful signal because these are founders of good companies who are funded by good VCs, and they’re basically identifying their own next generation. That kind of a network can be very powerful as a signal to follow.” Spearhead The idea comes with a caveat, though. When exploring where investors are deploying capital, be cognizant of the relative size of those investments. For “a VC who has a $300 million fund, investing a million dollars in a company might actually (signal) lower conviction than an angel investor who just has half a million dollars to their name putting $250,000 into a startup,” he adds. AngelList, Crunchbase, Twitter and other tools are all great ways to support your exploration, too. But research alone will not be enough. To get actual insight and build up your own judgement, you need to consider who should make up your current — and future — professional network. “I would argue that for someone who’s early in their career — and maybe even later — that the single most important thing about a company is the alumni network you’re going to build,” Naval says. “Who are you going to work with, and what are those people going to go on to do?” So reach out to the people you want to talk to ask about their advice, about what startups interest them right now, and about any other insight they’re willing to impart. Maybe don’t aim for folks like “Marc Andreessen and start asking what startup you should join,” Naval admits, but “you can identify 10 or 20 people in Silicon Valley you admire. Maybe, ‘Oh, this was the fifth engineer at Dropbox, and I read their blog and this person is super thoughtful.’” The system is simple, but its potential is vast. With a bit of momentum and the right connections, you’ll find more than one startup where you can launch your career. The question then becomes: Which one do you choose? “Pick a startup that is not totally raw. You can calibrate a little bit and (make your decision) heavily based on the quality of the team and the alumni,” Naval suggests. “Those are the people who are going to form your core network in the tech industry for the next decade.” Meaningful value comes from compound interest If you had to sum up Naval’s philosophy in one quote (or perhaps, more appropriately, one Tweet), his advice for finding your first job in tech would come down to a single concept: “All returns in life, including in relationships, are from compound interest.” You want to rise, early in your career, to a senior position because that position will accrue more compound interest over the 30+ years of your life than if you take your time getting there. “Some of the most successful people that I’ve seen in Silicon Valley had breakouts very early in their careers,” Naval says. “They got promoted up to VP or Director or CXO or CEO, or started a company that did well, fairly early. If you’re not getting promoted up through the ranks, it gets a lot harder to catch up later in life. It’s good to be in a smaller company early because…there’s less of an infrastructure to prevent early promotion.” Similarly, you want a strong alumni group to begin forming at or before your first job. If you remain close, your relationship can provide compounding value for the rest of your career. As Naval says, “If you’re working with the same person 20 years from now, the trust you build up with them is so great, that the things you can do with them are incredible. You can start companies with them, or you can invest in their company on a handshake, and you’ll never have to worry about… (things like) whether they work hard enough.” The secret to a successful career, Naval believes, is to optimize for this compound interest. Your first job — or your initial investment, to follow the analogy — is what sets the stage for a lifetime of high-value, compounding growth. Originally published at angel.co .

Naval Ravikant’s No Nonsense Guide To Choosing Your First Job In Tech

In 2018, there were roughly 30% more full-stack engineering roles posted to AngelList than there were front-end or back-end positions. To many in the engineering community, this is a bad thing. Over the last 10 years, think piece after think piece has been published questioning the legitimacy of full-stack engineering roles. The criticism can be bucketed into two claims: . With how complex the average stack is today, no one could possibly become an expert in every piece of it. Full-stack engineering roles are unrealistic . Cash-strapped companies hire full-stack engineers to do the job of multiple engineers for one salary. Full-stack engineering roles are exploitative But does the data support either of these claims? The data doesn’t indicate the full-stack roles are exploitative in salary or unrealistic in scope. In fact, it suggests that if you’re interested in a cross-functional position, in learning new skills, or in working at an early-stage startup, a full-stack engineering role might be the perfect job — if you know what to look for. In short: No. All of this criticism really starts with a fundamental misunderstanding of full-stack roles. Why “full-stack” really means “early-stage” One of the chief criticisms of a full-stack role is that it pays a generalist less to handle an entire stack than it would pay a specialist to handle one piece of that stack. To the critics’ credit, there is some data to back this up: Full-stack engineers in New York and San Francisco make less, on average, than front-end or back-end engineers in the same cities. But this is not the smoking gun critics make it out to be. If you look at the same data, you’ll see full-stack engineers in San Francisco and New York City also receive larger equity grants, on average, than engineers in specialist roles: To understand why this is happening, we need to look at how different engineering roles are distributed by company stage. While the majority of front-end and back-end job listings on AngelList belonged to companies with more than 10 employees, the majority of full-stack job listings belonged to companies with fewer than 10 employees. To be clear, that’s fewer than 10 total employees, not just engineers. Full-stack engineers are disproportionately distributed toward early-stage companies, where salaries are lower, but equity grants are higher. Comparing the average salary of a full-stack engineer to a front-end engineer’s is really a comparison of early-stage salaries to later-stage compensation. Full-stack engineers at seed-stage startups aren’t supposed to be experts at every piece of the stack. Full-stack engineers need to know enough — or be able to learn enough — to build and ship a product with a small team of contributors. As a startup scales, specialist engineers will be necessary to handle the increasing complexity of the product, but at the seed stage, a startup needs makers — and that’s exactly what full-stack engineers are. Why would engineers want to be full stack? While the argument for why early-to-mid stage companies need full stack engineers is clear, why would you, as an engineer, want a full-stack role? What is your upside? Majed Itani, head of engineering at , an early-stage AI-powered startup helping sales teams, exclusively hires full-stack engineers. He says he believes there are two groups of people who get the most out of full stack roles: SetSail Engineers early in their careers who want to learn as much as possible. Engineers later in their career who thrive on generalist work. For junior engineers, “if you want to learn everything, go to a seed-stage startup,” Itani says. At a larger company, you’d likely be responsible solely for integrations or a database. At an early-stage company, you’ll be responsible for figuring out how to build a new product, which could mean learning the infrastructure, the back-end, and the front-end all in the same month. By the same token, Itani says he believes senior engineers who like owning a product from idea to production, who want exposure to fundamental business problems, and who prefer generalist work, tend to be happiest in full-stack roles, where they are virtually guaranteed to never be pigeonholed into doing one thing. If you fit either of these profiles, a full-stack engineering position may be the perfect role. Now you just need to know how to find a good one. How to tell good full-stack engineering roles from bad It’s not hard to find a job listing for a full-stack engineering role. The key is knowing how to vet them. Positive signals on a job listing include: The startup will be (fewer than 50 employees). early-to-mid stage The role will offer a than the industry average for specialist roles. . larger equity stake You can check averages here The role’s responsibilities should include some . product-level decisions Ideally, all of this information will be listed on the job posting. Bonus points if the company has documented its philosophy on full-stack engineering. While there are some obvious immediate red flags — if a company wants to severely underpay you, or expects five years of experience in 18 different technologies, run — what qualifies a “bad” full-stack engineering role is going to depend on your priorities. Full-stack engineers aren’t myths — they’re makers The debate over whether full stack engineers are myths or not has always been misguided. The critics are correct that there’s no giant pool of engineers who have mastered every piece of the stack and can ship beautiful enterprise software single-handedly. That definition, however, is not what a full-stack engineer is. In practice, a full-stack engineer is one who is close to a product in its early stages, who has the generalist skills to jump from one piece of the stack to another, and who has the speed and agility to ship features and fix bugs as the product grows. The task of a full-stack engineer isn’t to be a world-class specialist. It’s to be a maker — and early-stage startups need makers more than anything in the world. Originally published at angel.co .

Full-stack Engineers Aren’t Myths — They’re Makers

Evaluating a startup is inherently difficult. You’re trying to evaluate the company while still impressing your interviewers, and that balance can be tricky. At the same time, candidates have a tendency to make this process harder than it needs to be by being uncertain of what they actually want out of a company_._ Understanding what you want out of a new job is prerequisite to joining the right startup. Before you apply for any new jobs, you need to figure out what your top priority in a new role is. For most candidates, this will be one of three things: Compensation Career Culture For each of these priorities, we have broken down 10 questions that will help you vet whether or not a startup will satisfy your goal. Note: There can certainly be overlap. Wanting more cash and a better culture aren’t mutually exclusive goals. In reality, however, one of these priorities is going to be more important to you than the others. 1. If You Want To Make More Money If you want to work in tech and make the most money possible, you should be applying to tech giants (think Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google). Simply put, they offer the highest compensation in the industry. However, for many people, working at a startup will always be preferable to working at a giant corporation. Some people prefer the high risk, high reward potential of owning equity in a startup. Others simply can’t work in a non-startup environment. If you’d rather take a chance at being an early employee at the next Google than being employee #85,000 at a tech giant, or if you just love startups but want to maximize your income, you need to do three things: Figure out how much pure cash you can make. This is obvious, but you want to establish that you’ll be making the most cash possible via your salary and bonuses. Additionally, you want to make sure there is a clear path for your salary to increase as you progress in the company. Ask these three questions to figure out your immediate earning potential with this company: Simple, but critical. A higher range means the potential for more money. “What is the salary range for this role?” You want to make sure raises aren’t uncommon in this organization. “How are raises calculated and awarded?” You want to see generous bonuses that are tied to plausible goals. “How do bonuses work?” As a bonus question, ask yourself by benchmarking it with . “How competitive is this offer?” AngelList’s salary tool Establish the long-term viability of the company. Startups crash all the time. A startup can offer you the most generous compensation imaginable — if it crashes in six months, you’re still out of work. You need to make sure this startup is going to last. Ask these three questions to get a sense of the startup’s long-term viability: If not, they don’t have real money, and there’s no guarantee they ever will. “Do you have product-market fit?” Your earning potential grows with revenue. Slow growth means less income. “What is your current growth rate?” The longer the runway, the more financially stable the company is. “What is your runway?” If all three of these questions produce positive answers, then you know you are interviewing at a company that has the momentum, stability, and cash on hand to satisfy your goal. Evaluate the real worth of your equity offer. Startup equity is a complicated topic that is worthy of an entire book, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll keep this simple. You need to know that equity in this startup actually has a chance of producing a nice windfall for you. Also, while other questions in this article can be asked mid-interview, these questions should be asked after you’ve received an offer. Ask these three questions to establish whether or not equity is valuable at this startup: Your percentage of ownership means more than your number of shares. “What percent of the company do these shares represent?” The more owed in , the less your equity is likely worth. “What is your total preference stack?” liquidation preference This gives you a reference point for valuing your potential payout. “What’s the minimum price you would exit for?” If the startup is offering you a good percentage of the company, isn’t carrying an insane preference overhang, and would like to exit at a realistically high price (or IPO), your equity is in good shape. 2. If You Want To Advance Your Career Quickly If you’re looking to move forward in your career — whether that means stepping into more senior positions, or switching to a different role entirely — you need to use a completely different framework for evaluating this startup. Instead of thinking of the money you’ll make immediately by joining this startup, you need to think of how this startup will affect your career years from now. To do that, you need to do three things: Chart your room for growth in this company. Many startups suffer from overly flat structures, in which it can be next to impossible for a team member to step up and take on a more senior position. You want to avoid getting trapped at all costs. Ask these three questions to understand your growth potential within this startup: You want a company that plans for your growth. “What progression do you envision for someone in this role?” The more responsibility you get out of the gate, the better. “Does this role contribute to higher-level decisions?” You don’t want to get stuck maintaining legacy code. “Will I be able to learn new skills and technologies in this role?” If this role is going to allow you to engage with high-level business strategy, learn new in-demand skills and technology, and move quickly through the company, then this startup is offering you a high growth potential. Decide if this startup will open doors for you later in your career. Joining the right startup will allow you not only to grow within the company, but will unlock new opportunities for you even after you’ve moved on. The network the startup gives you — and the brand it allows you to put on your resume — are incredibly important factors to consider. Ask yourself these three questions to discern whether or not this startup will help you later in your career: Answer this yourself. Being an alumni of a famous company will qualify you for later opportunities. “Does this startup have a big ‘brand’ already?” If the founders have had successful exits in the past, they’re great relationships for you to have. “What are the founders’ backgrounds?” In general, you want to work with world-class people. The more impressive your team members are, the better your network will be. “What are the backgrounds of the people on your team?” Joining a startup with a respectable brand, whose founders and team members could potentially form an incredible network for you in the future, is a great career move. Determine where you want to be and if this startup will get you there. You will have to ask yourself, not an interviewer, all of these questions. Candidates often hurt themselves by settling for startups that, on paper, seem like smart career moves, but in reality, are the furthest thing from what they want. Ask these three questions to figure out whether not this startup can get you what you want, career-wise: If there’s a field you’re incredibly passionate about, join it. Don’t waste time. “Is this startup in the field you ultimately want to work in?” You will not do your best work if you aren’t excited about it. “Will this startup expose you to technology and problems that excite you?” If you’d like to be a PM, but this company doesn’t have PMs, don’t accept a different role hoping you can change the company’s strategy. “Does this startup have the sort of role you’d ultimately like to be in?” As a bonus question, ask yourself Any investor or founder familiar with the company will be able to give you some insight as to whether or not this would be a good career move. “Do I know any investors or founders who can share insight with me?” 3. If You Want A Great Culture Above All Else For many candidates, working in a company where culture fits their lifestyle is far more important than maximizing their income or career potential. To evaluate how well you’ll fit into a startup’s culture, you need to do three things: Get a sense of this company’s values. Culture begins with a company’s core values and principles. To understand whether or not you’d fit into their culture, you have to know if you agree with their values. Ask these three questions to get a better picture of the company’s culture, and the values that drive it: A company with a strong culture will have values that go deeper than buzzwords. “What are this company’s core values?” You can measure how important culture is by how prominently it features in business decisions. “How are these values reflected in company processes and policy?” A strong culture means that some people won’t work out at the company, not because they’re untalented, but because their personalities don’t fit. “What kind of people — who are otherwise successful — don’t work out here?” As a bonus question, ask yourself If so, this company may be a perfect fit for you. “Do I embody this culture?” Evaluate the company’s communication style. A big, and often ignored, part of enjoying life at a startup is fitting into its communication style. For example, if you’re a quiet, head-down type of worker, you may not enjoy your day-to-day in a chatty, open office layout. Ask these three questions to get a sense of the company’s communication style: If constant conversation stresses you, or if it energizes you, this is crucial information. “What is the general level of socializing?” If you need a structured process for communicating with leadership, 1-on-1s are huge. “Do team members have structured 1-on-1s?” If you hate socializing after work, a mandatory weekly happy hour will probably be soul crushing for you. “What are company social events like?” You want a team whose communication style is effortless for you. If something as basic and unavoidable as communicating with your team causes friction for you, you’re probably in the wrong place. Gauge the flexibility this company provides employees. Whether you want a culture where you can take time off at your discretion, or you want a culture in which everyone works into the evening, understanding the flexibility of a startup is crucial. Ask these three questions to understand the startup’s flexibility: Being able to work from home is a good indicator of overall flexibility — and a great perk if you want to spend more time at home. “What is the policy on remote work?” Depending on your life situation, you may need flexible time off. “What is the vacation policy?” Whether you get unlimited vacation time or two weeks PTO, the important thing is that people in the company actually use their vacations. “Did the founders take vacations this year?” As a bonus question, ask yourself While you obviously won’t have complete access to employees’ life stories, look around the office and get a feel for the people that work there. If the company only attracts people of a certain age and background, it’s policies are probably tailored to their needs. “Are there other people in similar life situations to mine working here?” Never Ignore Red Flags — Regardless of Your Priority Just because you choose to vet a company for one of the above priorities doesn’t mean you can completely ignore the others. A company in great financial shape is still likely to fail if they have an absolutely toxic culture. A company with an amazing culture will fail if they can’t make money. While you should pick one priority and optimize for it, be cognizant of the others. You can ask all thirty of these questions, and simply place more weight on the answers you’re prioritizing. No career move comes without risk, but by looking at your potential new startup through the above three lenses — and emphasizing the one that matches your priorities — you’ll have the highest chance of landing in the best spot for you. Originally published at angel.co .

30 Questions To Vet A Startup

“Were you aware of the open-source software program at Facebook?” That was the question James Pearce, former head of Facebook’s open source program, asked engineers when studying why they joined the company. According to Pearce’s presentation at , not only were two-thirds of Facebook’s engineers aware of the open-source program before they joined the company, but said it “positively contributed to their decision to work for” Facebook. O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention half of the engineers Facebook isn’t alone in this arena. Open sourcing code, regardless of company size, is one of the best ways to recruit top engineers. We analyzed the 30 most-applied-to U.S. tech companies of all time on AngelList and found that over half of them host open-source projects: There is an art, however, to leveraging open-source projects as recruiting collateral — you’ll need to do more than post a repo to GitHub and hope for the best. To get recruiting benefits out of open sourcing your code, you’ll need to approach each project with a marketer’s mindset. 1. Write Code Any Engineer Can Read The point of open sourcing software is to allow outside engineers to see it and, potentially, contribute to it. For that to happen, your code has to be written so it’s simple for outside engineers to understand. This means: Refactoring your code to be as simple as possible Following style conventions for names, whitespace, etc. Replacing private information with environment variables Commenting your code to contextualize snippets within your broader codebase. project, a tool for building drag-and-drop interfaces (think Trello) in React, is a good example of clearly written open-source software. Atlassian’s react-beautiful-dnd The project’s structure is modular, and the code is thoroughly commented and simple to read: When open sourcing code, approach every file as if the person reading it hasn’t seen the rest of your codebase — because they almost certainly haven’t. In the above example, even though it reflects a simple export, team uses comments to explain what each function does, selects property names that accurately reflect their values, and stays consistent in styling. Atlassian’s As a result, the repository has more than 10,000 stars on GitHub and commits from dozens of contributors. The lesson is simple: The easier it is for outside engineers to understand your code, the more likely they are to contribute. 2. Write Documentation That Sells Your documentation is your sales copy. It’s what will convince engineers, at first glance, that your project is worth contributing to. It needs to: Articulate your project’s value proposition Explain any considerations or processes you expect from contributors List technical specs, dependencies, and licenses Provide easy-to-access reference material for special use cases (Approximate Nearest Neighbors Oh Yeah) project, a library that “searches for points in space that are close to a given query point,” does this extremely well. Its README file includes how to install the library, the background behind the project, code examples, licenses, dependencies, and a deep dive into the underlying software logic. Spotify’s Annoy It also includes a benchmark of Annoy’s speed versus other nearest-neighbor libraries: With just a single page of documentation, engineers have the information they need to decide if Annoy is a project where they want to contribute. In 2018, more than 82,000 repositories are published to GitHub every day. Getting your repo to stand out among the millions of others will require effort and strategy, but it’s not altogether different than launching a product. To boost awareness, consider promoting a new repository on: High-traffic distribution nodes: Hacker News, Reddit, Tech Ladder Relevant communities: Product Hunt, Gitter, Dev.to ( ) Note: AngelList acquired ProductHunt in 2016 Channels where you already have a following: email, social media, and more You can also get creative with other marketing tactics. For example, the team at , a nonprofit that builds software for other nonprofits, at local universities that required students to use their new library, sparking early forks and stars. Hack4Impact taught engineering workshops For companies that may be recruiting from a smaller niche of engineers, promoting a repo is even more important. , a startup that helps customers launch large-scale data operations, has a codebase written in a fairly obscure language called Pony. When the company open sourced all of its code between 2017 and 2018, it leaned heavily on promotion, writing blog posts, giving interviews, and presenting at conferences about the decision to build its codebase in Pony. Wallaroo Labs Sean Allen, VP of engineering at Wallaroo, said the results have been strong: “A decent chunk of the people who’ve interviewed with us are folks who want to work in Pony and [are interested] because our codebase is the largest openly available Pony codebase.” Think of your repository as a product, and the engineers you’d like to contribute to it as your market. Why Top Engineers Want Open Source “It’s a necessity, if you want to hire the best people, to work in the open,” said CTO Daniel Doubrovkine. The reason for this, he explained, is that “personal engineering brands have become really, really important for individual contributors. Engineers today are less interested in parking their skills in a place and not being able to showcase them. They want to work in the open because it creates some visibility to them.” Artsy To serve this, Doubrovkine decided his engineering teams would work open source “by default” — meaning unless an engineer can explain a business reason for not publicly publishing a piece of code, it is published in a public repository. As a result, most of Artsy’s engineering materials are freely accessible (you can even see its engineering onboarding documents . “The best companies align business needs with the desires of individual contributors to create their personal brand,” he said. here The fact that Artsy’s engineers are required to share their code publicly, with their name on it, is used as a selling point in Doubrovkine’s recruiting pitch, and it makes sense for more than just his company. “Smart people like to hang out with other smart people,” Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of . “Smart developers like to hang out with smart code. When you open source useful code, you attract talent.” wrote GitHub Originally published at angel.co .

Want To Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

The past two weeks have seen a lot of talk about the implosion of early-stage seed funding. The numbers may be somewhat deceiving, since founders and funds don’t always report their rounds (and with convertible / SAFE notes don’t have to). But the trend is clear — the fundraising environment for seed stage start-ups has changed. That means if you’re entrepreneur, your fundraising strategy needs to change. And that includes raising money from an an Syndicate. AngelList Syndicates are the single best financial innovation for start-ups in the past five years. AngelList Here’s why. Fundraising for seed stage start-ups has changed PitchBook and the NVCA published their in October. The report picked up steam with coverage on and Fred Wilson’s take on the “ ”. Q3 2017 Venture Monitor Techcrunch the early stage slump On a dollar basis, the decline has been fairly mild. On a deals basis, things look not so good. The has come down from its peak in Q2'15 of 1,495 to 788 in Q3'17. That’s roughly half the deal activity from just two years ago. number of closed seed rounds per quarter And it doesn’t look like that trend will stop. For the enterprise, platform shifts across mobile, cloud and SaaS that drove a lot of seed investments in 2012–2015 are in full swing. Seed investors are waiting for their early bets to play out. On the consumer side, bigger themes like “on-demand”, “sharing economy” or “millennials” have seen their fair share of . Investors are spending their capital to double-down on the winners. failure and consolidation Two uphill battles Combine the decline in deal volume with a pessimistic outlook on who’s got the negotiation power. In 2015, according to , 64% of founders agreed that entrepreneurs had more influence when negotiating terms. That has flipped. 53% of founders now say that investors have the negotiation power. First Round’s State of Startups 2017 In short, early stage start-ups are facing two uphill battles: lower odds of getting funding (lower deal volume) less leverage when raising money (investors have the negotiation power) Ouch. Enter AngelList Syndicates But there’s hope. Great companies will always find a way to get funding, even in a tough market. And one source of funding that I believe founders have paid too little attention to are . AngelList Syndicates Let’s look at the traction of AngelList startup investments — quite a different picture! The upward trend is obvious. Number of AngelList startup investments Since 2013, , across . AngelList has closed well over 1,800 investments worth $685 million over 200 active Syndicate leads A shift to institutional money Syndicates have evolved. Fast. With the launch of the and , the first online venture fund built on AngelList, syndicates have shifted from angel funding to include institutional money. Consider , which has one charter: Deploy $115 million via private syndicated deals on AngelList. AngelList Platform Funds Maiden Lane Hone Capital As a result, the ticket size (larger) and structure of syndicates (more actors) have changed. A new paradigm Conventional wisdom on various and accelerator blogs suggests to “ ”. founder finish a seed round with AngelList I’m making the opposite argument. You should with a Syndicate. start Based on , I recommend including an Syndicate into your fundraising strategy from Day One. our own experience AngelList In order to do so, you need to understand three things: how a Syndicate fits into your capital mix the structure of Syndicates, and the roles and incentives of all actors. In this post, I’ll touch on (1), how a Syndicate fits in your capital mix. (2) and (3) are for follow-up blog posts. Six sources of capital An is one out of six sources of capital that I think every start-up should look to tap, particularly when you’re starting from $0 or graduate from an incubator. I call this the “funding ladder” that you need to climb. AngelList Syndicate In order of typical minimum ticket size: Friends, co-workers & family ($5K+) Angels ($50K+) AngelList Syndicate ($100K+) Family offices ($250K+) Corporate VCs ($250K+) Institutional / seed funds ($250K+) In September 2016, the , with larger Syndicates reaching seven figures. For seed rounds in the $1–$3M range, a Syndicate can therefore contribute anywhere between 10–40% to the round. average syndicate check size was $390K That’s a significant chunk, and a key reason why a Syndicate should not be considered as a way to “fill your round”, but rather as a key financing vehicle that deserves top priority when planning your fundraise. Getting your leverage back Nothing gives you leverage like traction with your funding and a large top of the funnel with more money that wants to get in. Everybody on the funding ladder is in the business of generating a return. What’s different is that some may have additional, non-financial goals. Consider . Their goal is to bring product innovation faster into BMW. The Garage issues a supplier number and purchase order, recognizing the startup as a bona fide vendor. the case of the BMW Startup Garage And then there’s risk. Some investors have a different risk appetite. You can use that to your advantage, and that’s where Syndicates come in. AngelList Syndicates allow founders to raise money in one shot from a group of accredited investors. Some of those investors have a higher risk appetite. They want a higher risk exposure for a part of their money. The amount could be as low as $1,000 on a per deal basis. But find a 100 of them, and you have a $100K check. And that’s one thing a Syndicate does. It pools money with a higher appetite for risk. Start by finding a Syndicate lead. The first $50K you meanwhile may have to collect in $10K checks. But a vote of confidence by close friends and colleagues goes a long way. A Syndicate lead will look at that. Add the AngelList Funds into the mix, and all of the sudden you may find yourself with $300K in committed capital. That will attract more money. And that gives you back your leverage. Get your house in order This is material for follow-up blog post, but before you start raising money via a Syndicate, you need to “get your house in order”. Set up a , make sure you have the right email address in your profile, etc. proper profile on AngelList In 2013, asked “ ” — as we enter 2018, I think the answer is clear for founders: Mark Suster Is AngelList Syndicates Really Such a Big Deal? Yes. But I also don’t want to make it sound too easy — fundraising is hard, and there’s a lot of due diligence, process and heavy lifting involved with a Syndicate. AngelList and the leads make that happen. So follow me for my next post, where I’ll cover the structure of a Syndicate. here Together with , I’m a founder of intermix.io. In 2016, we’ve raised money via an AngelList Syndicate. Paul Lappas to , , , , , and for reading drafts of this. Thanks Paul Biggar Zach Coelius Jenny Fielding Dustin Dolginow Hiten Shah Pete Soderling Sunil Pai

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