There we go. It has been 6 months since I started to join AngelList syndicates. It has been a wild ride ever since, with a few hiccups but an amazing AngelList team to get them solved. Probably being one of the first people from Germany to join a Syndicate, the first wire took two weeks as the automatic matching didn’t really work. Fixed. You couldn’t see when you sent which money and the history of your balance. Fixed. A lot more details have been ironed out, but all in all, even back then, after I took the leap, it was really easy. Join a syndicate, wait for deals to come in.
One of the important things is that wiring money from Germany to the United States takes AGES! Roughly a week to be exact. So if you join Syndicates that requires you to have the money on your AngelList account as the investments are pre approved, you need to have enough money on your account.
I am still undecided about some of the syndicates to join and how much to screen deals. Based on the 24 deals I saw and 21 that ended up as an investment, I have to say though that you do not get a lot of information anyway. That is not how this is supposed to work. You back people you trust to provide good deals or rather, the kind of deals, deal structure and investment philosophy you like. Like with investing into startups directly, you have to think whether you believe that person will be successful and have an idea (however wrong it might be) about why.
I did back Jeff Schox Syndicate for example. He owns a patent law firm and has a lot of customers and if he sees something very good, he invests … and takes the syndicate with him. Some very interesting past investments and already interesting deals in the syndicate. But first and foremost I understand which this might just work.
Another is Brock Pierce, whom I chatted with ages ago about another company he founded. He is starting to really have a name in the Bitcoin space, also being a Bitcoin Foundation Board Member. I know he is an entrepreneur at heart and has a brain that is hard to match. Why else would he have invested in Koinify, allowed me to back independently. I also would have backed his latest deal but I only came into the syndicate when it was closing and you can’t enter a syndicate deal anymore then it seems, even though there was still space left. Sad.
I have to admit that I am still undecided about Jason Calacanis syndicate and the separate funds Gil Penchina started (SaaS and Bitcoin) as the both have a size that requires / allows for larger deals and are moving into becoming more VC like structures and I am not sure yet if this is will work. Especially due to the speed that Jason is adding new deals, I am looking a lot closer at them. I like Syndicates as an addition to a good VC in a deal and both of them can do a deal alone. I am not sure if this works without a management fee that allows you to really have a support staff dedicated to the deals. They are working on those or already have them in place.
So what kind of investments are coming out of this, and I can’t talk about all of them yet.
OpenDoor happened with Khosla Ventures and lots of other people through Naval with Keith Rabois being one of the 4 founders. HoneyBook also through Naval includes Evan Williams, Michael Birch and others as main investors and is reshaping the events industry. Paintzen was a deal that came in through the Barabara Corcoran Venture Partners Syndicate … I invested with a Shark. :) Brilliant, Red Clay and Birdi came over Jason Calacanis. Vouch Financial via Gil Penchina with Greylock and First Round Capital.
Do I know that these investments will work? No. But I am making sure that I can spread my money over a lot of deals and have the time it takes to see if venture investment is successful. On top of that, based on the people I back, I do believe this has a very high chance of success. And don’t be fooled by the amount that I invest in companies listed on my profile. That is a only that high because I also invested into my latest startup, Giant Swarm, where we are working on changing how you as a developer handle your infrastructure both as a start and at scale. We are building this based on our experience having worked with everything from Metal and PaaS to IaaS providers and seeing that things like CoreOS and Docker can really change the game.
Once the syndicate model comes to germany I might actually want to look at getting a syndicate in as one of the investors. I need to get experience on the other side too. Then the only thing left would be having your own syndicate but for that I am too busy with making Giant Swarm a kick ass company.
