Angel Labs Managing Director Cheryl Kellond
For this first season of Angel Labs, we had over 300 applicants come in in the first two weeks. What I was looking for are founders who were approaching their businesses like businesses and as founders, not as projects. We were looking for things that had a real value proposition. That are solving a problem and have revenue streams outside of selling NFTS. Within that, we were looking for the companies that look like they just had founders that had some kind of earned secret or some special knowledge of their space. A big “why” that looked like they were gritty and tenacious, which turned out to be super important given how the markets went and that we're working NFTs into their business offering in a real value-ad way. Almost like you couldn't have done it without NFTS.
We looked for a host of things, but a lot of it was on the team. And the founder is what I always find most compelling, both when looking at Angel Labs and when selecting my companies at TechStars. Because at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're going to learn from the market, you're going to pivot a little bit, you're going to change a little bit and your tenaciousness and your love of the problem is what is going to get you through it.
HUG Studios Project Manager Amy McMillen
We focus a lot on the team, especially how resilient is that founding team. Founder-Product or Founder-Community or Founder-Mission fit is really important to us. And we've worked with creators who have been advocating for their causes and their missions and they're really solving those problems for years and years. It's not really just a quick project. Secondly, because most of our projects are NFT-based or NFT-enabled, we also do look at the art. Is it original? Does it strike an emotional core? If we are looking at artists and residents applications, of course, we'll focus even more so on that. Lastly, we look at their plan or their road map and this definitely goes again with the team and their track record already and seeing what types of experiences they have to bring in this space.
Base Camp at Outlier Ventures Program Manager Hanan Nor
What we look for essentially is what I would say 3C's, so coachability of the team. We want to make sure that you know that there's a founder-product fit as well between CTO and the CFO and the project that they're proposing. Compatibility with our master thesis as well as compatibility with the protocol that we partner with, so if you're building on Polkadot, you have to have certain pieces and strategic endeavors that you why you want to build on certain protocol like Polygon and Polkadot. And then we also look at the tissue which is context, what is the narrative and the storytelling that you're building, the traction, whether you are Web2 company moving into Web3. We always look at all these different contexts and nuances.
Angel Labs Managing Director Cheryl Kellond
Sometimes it's really obvious that the founder isn't taking the application seriously. It's clear that they haven't put in a full effort. Sometimes that's because they're just really early in the process. But you can tell the difference between someone really early and their thought process and someone that just put in an application because it looked easy. That's a huge red flag to me.
HUG Studios Project Manager Amy McMillen
In terms of any red flags, I would say anyone who Is looking for a quick win probably won't be a good fit for one of our programs. If the entire roadmap is to simply launch and sell NFTS, that is an example of a quick win in our book. We'd really love to see examples of clear long lasting action and anything around good storytelling or different examples of really building their narrative, why they're in this space and the specific problem that their job is always a green flag for us.
Base Camp at Outlier Ventures Program Manager Hanan Nor
This is a red flag in general for the industry. We are having a bit of trouble finding female founders. We know they are out there, but we haven't been able to successfully recruit more female founders. So when it's a very male-dominated company, I always ask where are your female founders or your female team members? It's not essentially a red flag, but just a question that I will put forward out there. We also look for whether or not the project or company is susceptible to rug pulls and, like what Amy mentioned, quick wins as well and different biases that revolve around Web3.
For more tips and insights, listen to the full conversation with Cheryl, Amy and Hanan here
This is not financial advice. If you don't want to spend money investing in crypto or Web3 — you don’t have to. The intent of this article is to help others educate themselves and learn.
