Venture Hacks

Yesterday, we launched AngelList, a curated list of angel investors, representing $80M going into early-stage startups this year.

Today, we’re launching a cool new way to get intros to these angels: StartupList. It’s a weekly email we send to AngelList, with 3 high-quality startups who want intros. Here’s how it works: you send us your pitch, we review it and, every Monday, we email the best 3 startups of the week to AngelList.

StartupList is already getting meetings for startups

I’m psyched because StartupList is already working. We released it on Twitter a few weeks ago and 9 investors like Mike Hirshland (Polaris), Matt Mullenweg (Founder of WordPress), and David Cohen (Techstars) have already asked for intros to 7 early-stage startups and counting. See the full list of investors who have gotten intros here. (We’re publishing these names with the permission of the investors.)

Startups: How to use AngelList 

If you’re a startup, apply to AngelList here. We welcome startups from all over the world. We look for the same things that early-stage investors look for: traction, social proof, and team. You don’t need all 3, but you need to kick ass in at least one of them.

Build a minimum viable product, put it in front of customers, and learn something about product/market fit. If you can’t get this far on your own, find some idea investors instead.

Then write a 150-word elevator pitch and apply to StartupList. Our elevator pitch template is a good place to start. Spend time writing and re-writing the pitch until it’s awesome. Get feedback from good writers and entrepreneurs who have raised money. You have 100% control over the quality of your pitch and there’s no reason not to kick its ass.

Runners-Up

If you’re not one of the 3 startups we highlight on StartupList each week, we may include you in the runners-up of the week. Investors have asked for intros to the runners-up, so it’s also a good place to be. One of the runners-up writes, “Where can we send you a small token of thanks? This added some social proof in itself with a couple of the folks we’re chatting with. I greatly appreciate it.”

Privacy

No one will review your pitch except the Venture Hacks team: Nivi and Naval. If we send your pitch to AngelList, it’s obviously out of our hands, but that’s no different than sending the pitch yourself. At your request, we can also send your pitch to specific angels instead of the whole list.

Angels: How to get StartupList

While AngelList is public, StartupList is only emailed to the investors on AngelList. If you’re an angel, apply to AngelList here. At a minimum, you should have made two $25K angel investments in 2009 and plan to make two more $25K investments in 2010.

Why we’re building StartupList and AngelList

Entrepreneurs are always asking us if we can introduce them to angel investors. It’s one of the most common questions in the startup world. And startups spend a lot of time trying to get these intros. Even the startups who end up raising money from Ron Conway, Fred Wilson, or Sequoia.

We think this is an unnecessary friction and we want to make it easy for qualified entrepreneurs to get intros to qualified investors.

Apply for StartupList and please help us spread the word! I’m looking forward to discussing your feedback in the comments.