 |
Angelgate is a controversy [1] surrounding allegations of price fixing and collusion among a group of ten angel investors in the San Francisco Bay Area. [2]
| |
Angelgate is a controversy [1] surrounding allegations of price fixing and collusion among a group of ten angel investors in the San Francisco Bay Area. [2]
The scandal began in September 2010 after Michael Arrington, editor of the TechCrunch publication, wrote in his blog that he had been turned away from a secret meeting among so-called "super angels" he knew, [3] held at Bin38, a wine bar in San Francisco's Marina District. [4] The participants at the meeting, among other things, discussed how they could compete with other angels, venture capitalists, and the Y Combinator business incubator for the limited pool of worthy investment opportunities. [5] Arrington said that after the meeting, he had been informed by two of the attendees that the investors had discussed how to fix low valuations for new start-up companies, and how to keep better-funded venture capitalists from investing. [6]
The blog became the subject of discussion among the Silicon Valley start-up community over the next several days. [7] [8] Investor Ron Conway, whose business partner attended the meeting, wrote an email highly critical of the angels involved and called the event "despicable and embarrassing". [9] Dave McClure, a well-known angel present at the event, [7] wrote in a blog that Arrington's account was inaccurate, and a tweet (later deleted) complaining about Conway. [10] Chris Sacca wrote a lengthy email that defended the participants and was critical of Conway, which was also leaked to TechCrunch. [11]
Reports arose that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation began reviewing the incident. [12]
There was skepticism that there was actually any collusion or that price fixing could succeed if it was attempted. [1] [13] [14] The event also gave rise to various online cultural phenomena. Among other things there was a flash mob at the wine bar, a Hitler Downfall parody, a spike in the establishment's Google rank, a number of Twitter jokes, [4] and so-called "fakeplans" for super-angel meetups on the site plancast.com. [7] On Monday, September 27, 2010, Ron Conway, Dave McClure, Chris Sacca, and others appeared at a panel discussion hosted by Arrington at his "TechCrunch Disrupt" conference in San Francisco [15] [16] where, despite Arrington's prodding, they avoided a "Jerry Springer moment". [17]
StumbleUpon was a browser extension, toolbar, and mobile app with a "Stumble!" button that, when pushed, opened a semi-random website or video that matched the user's interests, similar to a random web search engine. Users were able to filter results by type of content and were able to discuss such webpages via virtual communities and were able to rate such webpages via like buttons. StumbleUpon was shut down in June 2018.
Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden. It is headquartered at 140 New Montgomery in San Francisco.
Y Combinator Management, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was more than $600 billion by January 2023. The company's accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and was entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Forbes characterized the company in 2012 as one of the most successful startup accelerators in Silicon Valley.
Ronald Crawford Conway is an American venture capitalist and philanthropist. He has been described as one of Silicon Valley's "super angels".
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing.In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.
Xobni was a San Francisco-based company that made software applications and services including products for Microsoft Outlook and mobile devices. It was founded in March 2006 by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina from Adam's dorm room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of the Y Combinator summer founder's program. In late 2006, it relocated to San Francisco to be closer to Silicon Valley. It was acquired by Yahoo! in July 2013 for more than $60 million and shut down one year later.
Matt Cohler is an American venture capitalist. He worked as Vice President of Product Management for Facebook until June 2008 and was formerly a general partner at Benchmark. Cohler has been named to the Forbes Midas List of top technology investors and in 2019 was named to the New York Times and CB Insights list of top 10 venture capital investors. Cohler made the Forbes 'America's 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' list in 2015.
Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur, investor, and programmer. He was the co-founder of Loopt and is the current CEO of OpenAI. He was the president of Y Combinator and was briefly the CEO of Reddit.
1000Memories was a website that let people organize, share, and discover old photos and memories and to set up family trees. It was shut down in late 2013 after an acquisition by Ancestry.com.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by AUM.
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups, serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capital soon after, a new venture capital fund that will continue to work with companies he previously funded through 500 Startups.
Twilio is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
Ryan Junee is an Australian-American entrepreneur. He is the founder of Parsable and is based in San Francisco.
The Muse is a New York City-based online career platform founded in 2011 by Kathryn Minshew, Alexandra Cavoulacos, and Melissa McCreery.
StartX is a non-profit startup accelerator and founder community associated with Stanford University.
Strikingly is a website builder that allows the user, with little or no development experience, to create mobile optimized websites. The company takes a mobile-first approach, allowing users to create websites that are enhanced for viewing across all devices including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
David Lee is an American angel investor. Lee is best known for his former role at angel investment firm SV Angel, where he was the managing partner for several years. Lee's departure from SV Angel in May 2015 was widely reported and acrimonious, while investor and SV Angel partner, Ron Conway told fund investors that "Lee had breached his trust." Lee was named on Forbes Magazine's Midas list for the years 2014, and 2015.
Docker, Inc. is an American technology company that develops productivity tools built around Docker, which automates the deployment of code inside software containers. Major commercial products of the company are Docker Hub, a central repository of containers, Docker Desktop, a GUI application for Windows and Mac to manage containers. The historic offering was Docker Enterprise PaaS business, acquired by Mirantis. The company is also an active contributor to various CNCF projects, such as containerd and runC. The main open source offering of the company are Docker Engine and buildkit which are rebranded under the Moby umbrella project. Though, the core specification, Dockerfile, still includes the company trademark.
Ann Crady Weiss is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and advocate for workplace diversity and paid family leave. Weiss is on her second start-up, HatchBaby, with her co-founder and husband, Dave Weiss. She is a former Yahoo! executive who began her career as a corporate attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.