Posted on January 14, 2014
by Anand R
In their own description, the founders of Angie.co say their app is “venture capital meets match.com.” So how exactly does this VC matchmaking service work for VC funds & for startups & their founders?
At its core, Angie is an app for AngelList `that helps you find startups and follow their activity. It’s built using the AngelList API, and you need to have an AngelList account in order to use the app.
Their proprietary algorithm suggests matches between startups & investors based on how much traction the account has on AngelList, the associated site’s Alexa ranking, & social proof & reach on social networks including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Angie is obviously not the first app built on the AngelList API. There are others such as aWings, which is a useful app for searching AngelList & getting a quick snapshot of information about investors & startups.
Looking at AngelList Wings & Angie makes you wonder why AngelList is not doing this directly. In fact, the additional features that Angie has added to the core functionality also make a good case for an acquisition by AngelList.
This is the same thing that TwitPic has been facing with Twitter – They tapped into a pain point that Twitter had left open, & became so ragingly popular that Twitter had to make one of two choices – acquire TwitPic or launch a similar feature within Twitter.
As far as AngelList & Angie are concerned, the pain point was the lack of notification when someone shows an interest in your profile on AngelList. Angie will instantly let you know if someone follows you or posts a message or question to you on AngelList, & you can then connect with them directly through the app itself.
It’s pretty obvious how useful this could be for investors & founders on the go who need to access AngelList a lot. For example, Directly Co-founder Antony Brydon, who in the past decade has raised ten rounds of funding for four different startups, writes in TechCrunch about closing a $1.75 million seed round for Directly using an “inbound approach” to gin up hype & then let investors contact them.
One of the tools Brydon mentions is Angie, which he says alerted him every time an investor followed the company on AngelList or asked for an intro.
To add to this, Angie also has the ability to help you find & connect with investors, mentors & founders near you. The “Contact” tab has a “near” feature that shows how many people are near you.
So how is Angie itself doing on AngelList? It’s been trending & has received decent funding. Angie founder Alexander Dresen explains on their blog that’s there’s no magic or secrets involved. Timing and traction, he says, are the keys to doing well on AngelList.
He adds: you need to solve a problem people can relate to. People usually follow you because someone they know (and respect) follows you, or if they can immediately relate to the problem you are addressing.”
The Moscow, Russia-based Angie.co was founded in August 2013 & has received US $50,000 from investors, as per AngelList. Apart from being one of the founders, Dresen is also the CEO & handles product. Other co-founders, who together carry the rest of the startup’s responsibilities, are Ilya Rudometov, Sergey Kalachev, Alex Krivonosov & Sergey Blinov.
Click here to download Angie on iOS
Image Credit: Angie
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