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Angelic
take two
When you look at the greatest artists and creators, they have this rare ability to start over that nobody else does
AngelList serves 10% of all U.S. venture funds - more than 380 funds and billions in AUM.
The AngelList venture platform alone is worth more than $4B today
Not including the companies that spun out of AngelList:
The story starts with a string of failures
venture boy
Naval Ravikant is a Silicon Valley legend, the founder of AngelList, and a prolific venture investor.
But in 2000, he was a venture partner at August Capital after a messy exit from his last startup that involved litigation.
He was also writing a newsletter at the time called “Startup Boy”
Things picked up when he ran into a young man named Babak Nivi during a house party
Nivi needed advice on raising venture capital for his startup, and Naval offered him high quality information and introduced him to a lawyer on the spot. Nivi was so impressed that he decided to start documenting Naval’s wisdom so that others could benefit as well
babak
Some time goes by and then Nivi starts a blog by the name of “Venture Hacks”.
Nivi would ask Naval questions over email and then transcribe it into blog posts
The duo began to attract a large audience of founders and investors
Around 2006, Naval had an idea to turn Venture Hacks into something bigger than itself
He wanted to make a stock market for venture investing
With newfound inspiration, the two worked diligently for a year. They named one of their iterations “The # Deal Network”. They tried to build a software solution. They tried a Google group. No success
One year turned to three years, and in 2010, it was time to hang up the cape and go back to civilian life.
The people who succeed are irrationally passionate about something
Nivi wanted to call it quits and start selling ads and e-books on the newsletter. But Naval had one last trick up his sleeve
They decided to make a list of angel investors and send it out to entrepreneurs. To their surprise, angel investors were very interested in having their information listed
On that day, AngelList was born.
Around 50 top angel investors made the list, and many intros, investments, and connections were made in the first year of business.
metamorphosis
In 2022, AngelList raised a $100M Series B round at a $4.1B valuation.
AngelList is historically cash efficient and rarely raises venture funding
The raise took place after AngelList launched new products: rolling funds, AngelList Stack, and a $25M fund to invest in startups based on hiring velocity
In a TechCrunch article, AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli explained that the company has intentionally kept headcount small to limit red tape and prioritize a high employee to impact ratio. He also mentioned that AngelList is growing quickly and expenses are growing as well, so there is strong leverage on the financing.
Their high employee to impact ratio is no joke
Compare their valuation / employee metric with their largest competitor, carta
The disparity between the two companies cannot be entirely coincidental
Carta employs more than 10x as many people as AngelList
Naval has spoken at length about leverage when it comes to producing wealth
AngelList has maximized employee value by disproportionately hiring founders. According to CEO Avlok Kohli, almost 30% of their engineering and design hires are former founders.
40 hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes - train and sprint, then rest and reassess
mainstreet media season 2
In our last episode, we talked to John Bronson, former NFL player and current entrepreneur:
Played on the Arizona Cardinals and was later elected as President of Arizona’s NFLPA chapter
Exited founder of Finger Licking Dutch and Chief Business Officer of Conan Medtech
Invests in real estate, venture capital, and other asset classes
In this episode, we talk about working every day to earn a spot in the NFL, how John ended up in the same room as Shaq and 50 Cent, and investing time + money wisely
Watch the preview clip here
Listen to the episode here
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