AngelList’s Full Service Fund Management Offering

Accessing the venture capital asset class is difficult. Government regulation, legal complexities, and disparate service providers prevent many people from participating in the private markets. At the same time, venture capital can generate meaningful investment returns.

Even for someone with the economic means, network, and in-depth regulatory knowledge, the costs and efforts associated with forming and managing a venture capital fund pose yet another barrier.

For example, a new venture fund manager (also known as a “general partner” or “GP”) needs to form a number of legal entities (including a general partner entity, a management company, and the fund itself). Each legal entity requires selecting a jurisdiction, completing various state filings and drafting governing legal documents. This work can run upwards of $20K if you are solely using outside counsel.

The work does not stop there, however. Tack on annual tax filing obligations and the work associated with actually investing in startups, which should be the primary focus to generate top returns for the fund and your investors, gets lost as the GP finds themself with a significant amount of regulatory overhead for the life of the fund.

Recognizing the powerful opportunity available in VC, AngelList’s mission is building the infrastructure that powers the startup economy. One way we do so is through removing the friction on launching a venture fund with our Full Service Fund Management offering. Our Full Service Fund Management offering includes two fund structure choices: an AngelList-advised structure or Self-Advised structure so you can choose the best option for your fund. This provides flexible solutions for both emerging managers and institutional GPs alike.

The AngelList-Advised Fund Model

A key early innovation in that mission was simplifying and supporting a GP’s legal and regulatory compliance requirements, via a structure we call the “AngelList-advised fund model.” Under this offering, emerging GPs (often, GPs raising a <$10M fund, who don’t currently have internal team members) leverage AngelList’s robust legal, regulatory, and operational frameworks and minimize their overhead.

This structure provides:

• Reduced up-front legal costs of setting up these entities for emerging managers,
• Reduced ongoing legal costs related to regulatory compliance, and
• Speed and efficiency to launch: a customer can move from first call to fund launch in as little as a week.

In this model, AngelList entities serve as the legal general partner and Investment Adviser to the fund. The customer can participate in the management of the fund solely in their individual capacity (a role that we define as the “Fund Lead”) or they can choose to provide a formal co-advisory entity (a role that we define as the “Sub-Adviser”). The Investment Adviser, Sub-Adviser, and Fund Lead work together to advise the fund over the course of its life. Responsibility for the fund’s investing program is delegated explicitly to the Sub-Adviser and/or Fund Lead, with the AngelList entities provide ongoing support and mitigate conflicts or other unforeseen events if they arise. This means that the Sub-Adviser is focused on the most critical component of venture investing: the actual investing.

AngelList-advised funds have unlocked a whole new category of first time fund managers who can now participate meaningfully in an asset class without a notoriously high barrier to entry.

I have been using AngelList for years to run my SPVs and Venture Funds. They handle everything for me with incredible service. It's the best product in the market.

AngelList-Advised Fund Structure

The Self-Advised Fund Model

While the AngelList-advised model remains a core offering today, it is not the only fund product we offer. We also offer a “self-advised fund” structure, which tends to be chosen by GPs with significant capital under management ($10M), GPs who wish to build out their own internal operational and financial teams, or GPs who wish to use their own custom fund documents.

This structure provides:

• Support for pre-existing GP entities,
• Flexibility to use bespoke fund documents, allowing for GPs to use AngelList template legal documents or work with outside counsel to draft their own custom documents, and
• Access to AngelList support for core back office functions, as well as fulsome portfolio management support.

​​In this structure, the GP provides the general partner and advisory entities and is solely responsible for the legal and compliance posture for the fund. This model is more similar to the offerings available on other fund administration platforms.

A self-advised fund customer can benefit from AngelList’s key product efficiencies and innovations of the platform in the same way that AngelList-advised funds can, but does not receive the support of AngelList serving as General Partner or Investment Adviser.

Self-advised funds through AngelList make it easy for GPs of all sizes to customize, launch, and run their fund, all through one service provider.

I feel super excited to working together and with AngelList…there’s a lot to keep track of between the back office, administration, reporting, sourcing, diligence, etc., so much so that it can feel like wading through mud with an unclear end in sight sometimes. It's so refreshing to be around that similarly product-minded and driven energy again.

Self-Advised Fund Structure

Start Your Next Fund with AngelList

Over the past decade, AngelList has expanded the scope of what it means to be a best-in-class venture investor through transformative products and services. From an email list in 2010, to our recent innovations such as our Full Service Funds offering, to our fund-agnostic Software Suite for private markets—AngelList now supports first time GPs and institutional general partners alike in our mission to build the infrastructure that powers the startup economy.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to fund management. As such, AngelList offers best-in-class products and services for funds of all stages. You can learn more about our fund offerings here. Already running your fund? Check out our suite of software products, regardless of back office provider here.

Want to learn more about your options when structuring a fund on the AngelList platform? See our Help Center.