AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant and ubiquitous VC Dave McClure (500 Startups) sat down together at the PreMoney gathering in San Francisco, an “invite only” event on the future of venture capital. The pair first chatted about the hot topic of is there, or isn’t there, a tech-bubble but then they got down to details.
Ravikant discloses that AngelList is now doing about $15 to $16 million a month in online funding with 30 to 4o companies getting financed. Ballpark total; $200 million in crowdfunding a year, concentrated solely on seed-investing.
McClure poses the question: “should any of us be worried?”
Naval explains that, at least for the moment, they are creating a lot more seed companies for them [VCs] to pick from later.
AngelList is a sizable recruiting platform. Ravikant states that AngelList has 8 to 9 thousand companies actively recruiting from over 180,000 candidates. The matching service is generating about 200 hires a week – so AngelList is disrupting professional recruiting as well.
AngelList has expanded operations into the UK and Germany and are trying to get regulatory clearance in Canada, Australia and a few other places.
Ravikant addresses the issue of promising companies avoiding IPOs due to the regulatory burden. This also has the effect of shifting capital gains to the wealthy few.
“If you can raise billions of dollars in the private markets, why not stay private?”
Fun fact revealed: AngelList is talking to institutional investors to invest in their early stage syndicates. Does this sound a bit like the hyperbolic growth engendered by big money into peer to peer lending?
What the video below.
