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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

As @shervin said on Twitter: "Saying you don't like @AngelList is like saying you don't like Email. It's a communication tool. Not an investment philosophy."

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So if I wanted to wish my mother a Happy Birthday, AngleList would be a good way to do that? How about if I wanted to offer all the angels on the list a deal on certain mortgage-backed assets left over from the housing bubble?

Of course not. And the reason is that AngleList is email from specific kinds of people to specific kinds of people for a specific purpose. It's only useful because it filters out communication that doesn't fit the philosophy. If you have a different philosophy, if your purpose is different from that of AngleList, well, why participate?

A different way of looking at it is that AngelList is also the collection of people who use the communication tool to invest, so I think it's very reasonable to talk about "AngelList's investment philosophy".

Some people I know use Google Finance to invest. With ETFs specifically you can watch daily inflows and outflows to and from specific sectors.

Is there a Google Finance investment philosophy?

This is a disingenuous comparison. AngelList is a community, while Google Finance is merely an aggregator of many other communities.

That's not the impression that I got, but I guess that's just a testament to how customizable the experience on AL can be.

Perhaps a closer analogy would be something like WealthFront. I can choose to follow certain money managers and co-invest with some if I feel like it. Some are heavily into equity, while others are pursuing commodities. But to call it a community and look for WealthFront investment philosophy would still be a stretch.

Close. An online brokerage firm is probably a better example than Google Finance, because they both give you the information and facilitate the transaction. The firm selects the numbers to they show you that they think are relevant to the decision, and the means to make the decision. If you want to look at other numbers, it is up to you so find them by digging through reports or looking at other tools.

With AngelList, you get what AngelList thinks are the most relevant pieces of information, and it's up to you to contact the entrepreneur to verify information or get more information if you want. AngelList thinks that social proof is one of the most relevant pieces of information, so that's what you get.

The obvious problem with turning off AngelList is that with ETFs and public companies, there are many portals to get information and invest, while with startups, there is currently only one.

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