Interesting post Brad.  I think a similar dynamic applies to advising startups and introductions — if I don’t feel strongly enough about a company to either be an advisor or investor, I give real thought before introducing them to high-demand contacts, to make sure I’m genuinely doing both parties a favor.  It’s a good forcing function.  

On the investment front it’s similar — now having made a (very) few angel investments for the first time this year myself, I really notice the difference in the way I feel about making introductions for the companies I have invested in vs. haven’t, and it’s making me more thoughtful about those intros. 

All that said, since I have limited capital to deploy and since I avoid investments that could create a conflict of interest with my employer, I do find there are situations where I want to endorse a team (whose founders I know and whose plan I like) even though I’m not in a position to write them a check.  I wouldn’t want to let it be gamed, and it certainly isn’t specific to their investor offering terms, but I definitely see value in those kinds of endorsements on angellist, particularly when they are meted out thoughtfully from subject matter experts.

In a similar way, I don’t assume that if someone is connected to you on LinkedIn that you are implicitly “vouching” for them in a serious way — LinkedIn is simply too promiscuous a culture for that to be meaningful generally, even if some users are very careful and selective.  On the other hand, if you were to write a public recommendation for someone on LinkedIn, I would absolutely take that seriously.

Like any other social network, it comes down to the kind of culture that angellist and its participants collaboratively create.  Hopefully people behave thoughtfully and derive value from the thoughtfulness of others — and hopefully Naval is able to successfully foster that kind of behavior in managing the community.

My only angellist endorsement has already converted to an investment — I wonder if there’s data on that conversion rate…

May I respectfully submit that you are painting this topic with too broad a brush: Follow and Endorse are two very different things.

Following is akin to following someone on Twitter or liking a Facebook page – surely no one will come back to you later and complain that they lost money because you added someone to your Twitter follow list? Following helps make Angel List work – your followers see that you Followed a startup, and they’ll then perhaps follow too – with them having done nothing more reviewing the startup’s Angel List profile. This cycle of Follow -> notification -> more Follows repeats, and the startup ends up with a self-selected audience that is interested in following their progress.

Endorsing is a much stronger statement – and I absolutely agree that endorsements should be made with exceptional care. 

So, if you know someone and are trying to be helpful, why would you deny their startup the non-reputation-endangering act of Following when it could be incredibly helpful to them?

Brad, thanks for the thoughtful post and for being part of the AngelList community since the early days.

This is very helpful feedback and we’re going to take a look at the endorsements feature. I suspect we’ll make some changes.

Regarding follows, it’s a very useful way to stay up to date on companies (their updates show up in your feed and in a weekly digest). So I say follow the companies you want to follow, don’t follow the rest, and ignore the signaling issue.

Great post.  I immediately drew a correlation to LinkedIn and the random “Invites” I get from people I do not know.  Cheapens the value of connecting through a common middleman.

When I poked around AngelList and was clicking on various links. It appear that I could not introduce a company. It seems like you have to post your company then wait for someone to introduce it or for people to find it and folow it.

I imagine you get more people interested by posting more about your company. Kinda’ like building publicity.

The problem is that passive fund raising is not for go-getters (entrepreneurs). It stands to reason they would try to connect with people listed on AngelList in an active manner. So, if they can’t do that via AngelList they resort to email or some other form of communication.

If I am correct and entrepreneurs cannot actively connect with investors on AngelList. Then that is a failing on the part of AngelList, not the entrepreneur.

I know that I would not want to invest in an entrepreneur that sits around and waits. That’s like people who send a resume and wait. They are not good to have around. 

Another way to look at it is this. How many times have you gotten laid by sitting at home next to the phone waiting for it to ring?