AngelList Stack

https://www.angellist.com/stack

by tosh • 5 years ago

214 40 5 years ago

icey• 5 years ago

As both a founder and a hobby angel investor, I don't think this is something I'd use. AngelList has terrible UX and it's never clear how things work. Combined with slow customer support, I can't imagine how this would be better than using the best of breed for each part of banking, cap table management, legal, etc.

omarhaneef• 5 years ago

There is an advantage to having it one place. I would guess they will be successful if they provide a good UX.

Frankly I’ve been surprised for a few years that they hadn’t launched a Carta competitor.

thesausageking• 5 years ago

I agree. I've had terrible experiences with AngelList products. They seem to love shipping mvp versions of new things but not scaling them or even figuring out the major issues with them. They screwed up k-1s for me two years in a row, which cost me a ton of money with accountants to fix.

b200003• 5 years ago

a website is not a product

mfrye0• 5 years ago

Does anyone know how this compares to Carta?

ablekh• 5 years ago

Carta's most popular functionality (cap table and board management, 409A valuation etc.) represents a subset of what AngelList Stack offers. On the other hand, the former offers some high(er)-end functionality that is currently missing in the latter (including private liquidity, investment scenario modeling, audit compliance options, complex reports as well as pre-IPO and post-IPO support).

mritchie712• 5 years ago

Looks good, just curious why they didn't do it 5 years ago when this stuff was still hard.

* Incorporate with Stripe Atlas (just did it for the 2nd time and it was even smoother then the first)

* Mercury bank is incredible, I'm sure Blue Ridge would be a step down.

* Carta for equity

* Fundraising would be interesting, but PartyRound seems to be moving fast here.

paxys• 5 years ago

Agreed. It's hard enough to go after an established player with a few years' head start in a single sector, but Angel is simultaneously tackling like 4-6 of them. All the best to them.

b200003• 5 years ago

so what does mercury bank offer me? I visited the site and cannot find anything that seems like a massive advantage over some big name bank.

ryanwiggins• 5 years ago

Disclosure: I am the current head of growth at Mercury

- Mercury is online first and built for online companies... that means you never have to go in person to sign documents, we have APIs/integrations that connect to the tools you likely use for your business, etc.

- Many of the bigger banks charge fees or have otherwise poor experiences (wires, maintenance, minimum balances)that Mercury is better at: free accounts, no minimum balance, free wires, and just a general attitude of no-fees-wherever-possible

- The design and craft of the product experience around Mercury is super high - little details like transactions filters, easily being able to copy any account/routing number or auto-filling addresses, etc, make a huge difference when you compare side by side.

- Lots of other reasons, but I'll wrap with we're just getting started =)

But don't take my word for it - search Twitter (https://twitter.com/search?q=bankmercury) and see what our customers say

irl_chad2• 5 years ago

I had a horrible experience with Mercury bank. I’m a US citizen, but living in a foreign country (which is a US ally…). Mercury had no problem opening my account - but then a few months later froze my account for a week with no heads up. All my transactions just suddenly stopped working, no explanation. Support was completely unhelpful. Eventually they closed my account because of my geolocation and let me transfer the $ that was held out, but only after serious harm to the credibility of my business (late invoices, having to explain to partners that my bank account was frozen - resulting in loss of a partnership that would have resulted in a few hundred K in revenue).

Now I use a major US bank and could not be happier. Startup banks are a huge risk to business, I will never use one again.

daralthus• 5 years ago

Anything like this for EU?

tosh• 5 years ago

"Stack" is for business ops what GitHub and AWS lambda did for devops.

Sure you can roll your own and if you've done this in the past and are both opinionated and experienced you can re-use your know-how and you'll be fine. Everyone else is probably better off with sensible defaults and a platform that takes care of the details for you.

camgunz• 5 years ago

Are there similar services (Stripe Atlas, etc.) that let you use a progressive bank like Amalgamated Bank?

lewisl9029• 5 years ago

I've heard good things about Clerky: https://www.clerky.com/formation

They have streamlined onboarding flows for partner banks like Brex, Mercury, First Republic, etc if you incorporate through them.

Disclaimer: former Brex employee, still have equity.

ChicagoDave4• 5 years ago

And there it is. I walked through the process until the document page and the disclaimer. No gambling apps.

What the heck? It's a massive industry and legalized gambling is growing massively.

So disappointing.

austinjp3• 5 years ago

I'm curious, why do you want to work in the gambling industry? It exploits addiction and ruins lives. The tactics used to entice and retain customers are reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry: the product actively harms those that use it most so there's a continuous need to attract new users.

The apparent growth in the market may be real, but I suspect it will be short lived as governments and authorities stem the advertising, and investors turn towards opportunities that are less ethically unpleasant. Here in the UK every other ad on late night commercial TV is for gambling apps or services, while consumer-affairs radio programmes are exposing a rising tide of financial ruin fuelled by debt, low wages, under-employment, with gambling never far away.

If I understand your comment, gambling is explicitly disclaimed by AL's Stack. Surely that's another signal for you to consider. Many organisations are shifting away from unethical investments (for whatever definition of ethics they adopt). Gambling seems to have passed its peak some years ago, both in terms of opportunity and social acceptability.

So I'm genuinely curious. You're at angel/incorporation stage. Why aim for the gambling industry?

owlninja• 5 years ago

Gambling seems to have passed its peak some years ago, both in terms of opportunity and social acceptability.

In the US, to me, it seems sports gambling is priming for take off. Many states are legalizing it and you see gambling odds/lines on ESPN now. Many NFL stadiums are about to launch in-game gambling operations. It used to never be acceptable in the US to be out front about sports gambling but the worm has turned.

lowkey_• 5 years ago

Gambling seems to have passed its peak some years ago, both in terms of opportunity and social acceptability.

I'm not sure if you live in the US, but it's only gaining traction here in the States. It's becoming more socially accepted, widespread, and losing its stigma. Whether betting on the spread on sports games, betting on specific players' performances, season outcomes, or especially, fantasy sports.

You can't watch an NFL game for ten minutes these days without seeing an ad for DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM (lots of their ads this year), etc., so if you think gambling has passed its peak, I wonder if you don't watch much sports and it may not be targeted at you.

ChicagoDave4• 5 years ago

My app is strictly poker related, which I consider a skill game. Sports Gambling is on the rise. Casinos have never been more popular.

And even the first two phases of my plan have no gambling at all. It's an app to teach people how to build a successful poker strategy.

But it is gambling "adjacent", so I'll be bootstrapping the whole why.

mbesto• 5 years ago

What the heck?

1) This is stupid on AngelList's part to not say this upfront.

It's a massive industry and legalized gambling is growing massively.

2) It also a heavily regulated industry and is at the state level. They offer a bank account so it's no surprise they just outright block it. Have you tried to get a bank account for your business outside of this process? It's not that easy.

awinter-py• 5 years ago

ngl main appeal here is that azlo, the bank stripe atlas was using, has shut down and I don't want to learn how to replace it

chrisfrantz• 5 years ago

Atlas uses Mercury now and it’s even better than Azlo was, having been a user of both.

StriverGuy• 5 years ago

Using these legal filing/documentation in-a-box services never is as smooth as they advertise. 99/100 you will still need a lawyer and likely will incur more confusion/time/cost as a result of using boilerplate documents for a ton of stuff.

e-clinton2• 5 years ago

I’ve had a pretty great experience with Clerky

xrd• 5 years ago

How does the cost compare? Both Angel and Stripe are $500.

relaunched• 5 years ago

AngelList will be you deal flow very easily. However, despite the market being very hot, I find the angelList deals to be offensively so. An even bigger problem is that I don't trust the syndicates enough to back these startups, at these prices. It seems like the syndicate leads are very high volume, and the investment mins are very low.

I rather develop relationships and cut bigger seed checks than spray and pray; even if it means I do way less investing. I'd also say, my favorite thing about angel investing is developing a rapport with the founders and helping, when I can.

elisbce• 5 years ago

This is great! I wish they could have accounting and tax service included as well, which is an enormous pain for first-time founders.

jalonso510• 5 years ago

Small point only the lawyers will care about - they say they are using Goodwin form documents instead of Orrick form documents. Will make it much nicer to work with companies incorporated on Stack than the others.

AngelList Stack

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