Behind AngelList’s $4.1BN Valuation

If you’re in the startup world, you’ve almost certainly heard of AngelList. The company looks, at first glance, like a minimalist version of LinkedIn. But there’s more to it. The website will connect you to startup jobs, help your company hire talent, and lead you to investment opportunities in promising young startups. The company exemplifies the product experimentation that is the ideal in Silicon Valley, This latest funding round shows that AngelList is a winning model–and difficult to replicate.

                                                                            Via AngelList

Founded in 2010, the company began simply as a list of angel investors making multiple $25K deals. AngelList quickly became a well-liked resource for dealmakers. As was the trend back in the early 2010s, AngelList added a social component with investor and founder profiles and made it easy for both to match and mingle. Think OkCupid for angels. Soon thereafter, the company applied a similar equation to matching investors with qualified candidates to work at recently funded startups.

The company owes much of its impact to its active involvement in legislation, including Title II and III of the Jobs Act. The marketplace for start-ups has also had success with spinoff businesses, like Republic (a crowdfunding platform) and the acquisition of Product Hunt in a $20MM deal that added product discovery on top of job/investor/employee discovery. Likewise, in a self-aware but bold move, founder Naval Ravikant stepped back from his role as CEO in 2017, deciding to focus instead on his “zone of genius” in investments and idea creation.

For a deeper dive into AngelList’s zone of genius, check out this article from The Generalist or Twitter thread from author Mario Gabriele.