AngelList, a service that matches early stage startups with investors, is raising a big round of financing at a valuation that multiple sources say will top $150 million. Investors may include Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, among others, say our sources. This will be the company’s first outside financing.
Founded by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, AngelList has evolved into an incredibly powerful platform in the investing world. The hybrid social network, communication and crowdsourcing platform allows startups to access investors, and has also become a resource for investors looking to boost dealflow and connect with other investors.
The site currently has around 100,000 startup profiles. As of April, nearly 40 startups on AngelList had been acquired and 1,000 startups had been funded since 2010.
More recently, AngelList has started to actually be a part of the transaction itself, facilitating deals with legal documents. This includes standard term sheets, automatically generated closing documents, and tools to manage the process including electronic signatures, managing wire information, generating PDFs, and more. Earlier thus year, AngelList launched a way for startups to create a more interactive pitch deck. 500 Startups started using AngelList for applications for its incubator.
Recruiting is also an area where AngelList is thriving. The company has made hundreds of introductions between talent and startups, and has been interested in developing additional ways to make this process more efficient.
Another factor in AngelList’s favor is the recently passed JOBS act, which makes it legal to publicly announce that you’re raising money, raise money through equity crowdfunding sites and raise money from unaccredited investors. Currently, we’re waiting on the SEC to outline the actual provisions which is expected early next year. If more startups and businesses can raise money from both accredited and unaccredited investors, AngelList can be the platform of note to connect these parties. And, importantly, take a fee from any money raised.
AngelList declined to comment on this story.