I’m an AngelList superfan. It’s a beautiful marketplace for early-stage investors. The site has grown incredibly since I started investing in 2014, and today there are more than 100 syndicates to choose from.
Here are some of my favorites.
Jenny Rooke is a fantastic biotech investor. Her investments include Caribou Biosciences (a leader in CRISPR technology), Accuri (acquired for $205 million), and Intabio (also recently acquired).
I passed on Caribou Biosciences, and I regret doing so. The company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars since Jenny syndicated the deal.
Hack VC is led by Ed Roman, and it’s become one of my favorite syndicates on AngelList. He often syndicates deals that give people the opportunity to invest alongside excellent VC firms like Sequoia, Accel and Bain Capital Ventures. One notable deal where I’ve invested alongside Hack VC is Nebulous Labs. Nebulous is a very interesting crypto company that founded SIA, a decentralized storage network.
Unpopular Ventures – Generalist
Unpopular Ventures was founded by Peter Livingston and has become another one of my go-to syndicates. The deals are often unusual or different in some way, which can be a great thing in startup investing. Unpopular also frequently syndicates deals from emerging markets, which is somewhat rare on AngelList. I’ve invested in a few Middle Eastern and Indian deals that are doing very well, including delivery company Yassir.
One To Avoid
Now one I’m avoiding these days — Flight.VC. Flight was founded by Gil Penchina, a fantastic startup investor. But in my opinion Flight grew to be too large. And Penchina has handed off deal-making to multiple different people in his organization. The syndicate’s quality has dropped over recent years. Flight syndicate leads usually only invest $1,000-to-$2,500 of their own money in the deals. This is not an encouraging sign. Flight and the syndicate lead on that deal only have to put up a small amount of cash to get a large amount of interest in the company. This incentivizes them to syndicate as many deals as possible. I get invited to a LOT of deals through Flight. But I haven’t invested in one in a few years now. The quality just isn’t there anymore.