After having solved the tax issues with joining AngelList Syndicates from Europe, I have joined several of them and it has been an interesting ride that will surely add another post about in the comment months. This is about something else.
Syndicates out there seem to be Market or Angel Focussed, but what about doing Syndicates that are focussed on what the startups need. This should really increase deal flow for those syndicates and allow them to pick and choose. An example would be the “Payment Syndicate” with people from Paypal, Stripe, Coinbase, Square, VISA and the like. Or the “RTB Syndicate” with leads from Google’s AdX, Facebook, MediaMath, Criteo and AppNexus.
Why the syndicates look like they do today is clear, they are just too young. But what is their future. At the moment they tend to look very similar to crowd funding, arguably with some pretty nice people. It should be more. It can be more. The above, the Need Focused Syndicate, should be there and establish a new category not of super angel based on them having more funds available, but a quasi virtual angel that is more than the sum of its parts.
Looking forward to seeing it happen.
Another Way to do AngelList Syndicates was originally published in Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.