500 Startups Is Taking Applications For The First Time by Leveraging AngelList

This is really a nice move. Obviously it's intent is to help 500 startup and ensure Dave doesn't miss any nice deals. However, it's a great help for entrepreneurs and founders.

Since AngelList is an agnostic platform, the amount of time an energy you spent on one application can help you with other investment opportunity.

I learnt this the hard way. We recently applied to AngelPad. I really like their small size and watching Scoble's interview with Thomas made me think it was the outfit I wanted to be involved with. That devotion got stronger after talking to AngelPad graduates.

That said, AngelPad promised a 10-day turnaround. Nicely, they soon emailed everyone and explained due to the volume it may take them a bit longer but either way (in or out) they contact you-that was a nice gesture! Now you like them even more. So I spent a lot of my referral capital and time to enhance our chance of getting in. So far we are approaching the two months mark and I have not heard back at all. I do understand they are busy and I'm thinking they are being very diligent and I've emailing them every couple of weeks.

But now seeing what 500 startup has done, I wish everyone would use the same standard. This way, I spent all my energy in building my referrals in one place and I can apply to multiple program. These accelerators/incubators are designed to help founders, so why not use a process like angellist for future application and let founder spent their time an energy once and focus on building product, traction and a business.