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AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli: The Funding Market Today; Last-Mile Delivery; Competing w/ Carta | E1005

Avlok Kohli is the CEO @ AngelList. Under his leadership, Avlok has taken AngelList from an SPV provider to a company that is becoming the software platform for the entire industry. Today, AngelList supports over $15BN in assets and 40% of US unicorns have had a GP invest in them through AngelList. Prior to becoming CEO @ AngelList, Avlok founded 3 companies, all of which were acquired including by the likes of Square and eBay. ---------------------------------------- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:38) How Avlok Became CEO of AngelList (2:01) Last Mile Delivery (7:19) Today’s Funding Market (33:37) How AngelList is Using AI (36:45) AngelList’s Margins (41:52) Most Regretted Product at AngelList (43:06) Why AngelList Isn’t in Europe (46:03) Competing with Carta (48:10) The Secret to AngelList’s Incredible Speed of Execution (49:50) How AngelList Wins the US Market (52:37) Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Avlok Kohli We Discuss: 1. From 3x Founder to Scaling AngelList to $15BN in AUM: How did Naval convince Avlok to join AngelList and be CEO? Does Avlok believe in startups having defensibility in the early days? How important does Avlok believe it is for companies to be “first to market”? Why does Avlok believe all the last-mile grocery delivery companies will go bust in the downturn? 2. What is Going On in Venture: New Funds, LPs, Secondaries: Are we seeing the amount of net new funds reduce in the downturn? Are we seeing the size of new funds being raised, being smaller? Is the time to first close increasing in time? Does AVlok agree that the fund segment hit hardest by the downturn is micro fund managers? Which LP class has pulled back from fund investing most significantly? Why does Avlok believe institutions have returned to fund investing more than ever right now? Are we seeing an increase in fund secondary positions? 3. What is Going on in Startups: Rounds, Valuations, Party Rounds Are we seeing the number of startups able to close their round reduce? Are we seeing the size of startup funding rounds reduce? How does this depend on the stage? What are we seeing for startup valuations? Why is seed as high as ever? What is the most hit? How is the composition of funding rounds changing? More or fewer party rounds? When does Avlok believe we will see down rounds and pay-to-play, really come into effect? 4. The Business of AngelList and its Future: What are the margins on AngelList products today? What is the best margin AngelList product? What is the worst? What product did AngelList do that in hindsight, Avlok wishes they had not done? Why did AngelList back out of Europe? Was it a mistake? How does Avlok think about AngelList’s fierce competition with Carta today? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Avlok on Twitter: https://twitter.com/avlok Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ---------------------------------------------- #AvlokKohli #AngelList #HarryStebbings #20vc

Avlok KohliguestHarry Stebbingshost
Apr 24, 202358mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

AngelList CEO Dissects Venture Downturn, AI Leverage, And Beating Carta

  1. AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli discusses the current venture funding landscape using AngelList’s proprietary data, highlighting a sharp contraction in Series A–C activity while pre-seed and seed valuations remain buoyant. He explains how AngelList has built a high-margin, platform-style business across funds, SPVs, and cap tables, and why macro headwinds haven’t materially hurt the company. Kohli outlines AngelList’s product and pricing strategy, its decision to pull back from Europe, and its aggressive push into cap tables against incumbents like Carta. He also shares operating principles on speed, product focus, AI-driven automation, and why great teams still need great markets.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Venture is in a severe downturn at Series A and beyond, but early-stage pricing is holding up.

AngelList data show a rapid, unprecedented collapse in activity and up-round rates for Series A–C deals, while pre-seed/seed valuations remain elevated due to multi-stage firms moving earlier and new, less price-sensitive check writers at the earliest stages.

Only companies with real traction can raise follow-on rounds; many others are effectively shut out.

Series A and B rounds are increasingly reserved for startups with credible traction, while a significant cohort simply cannot raise at all, leading to extended runways via layoffs and delayed repricing that will likely surface as down rounds and pay‑to‑play structures in coming quarters.

LP behavior is bifurcating: individuals are pulling back, institutions are cautiously returning.

Individual LP commitments to traditional venture funds are down ~60%, while institutional commitments, after dropping, have begun to rebound—likely driven by clearer macro expectations and the perceived scale of the AI cycle.

AngelList’s platform model and automation enable strong margins despite market headwinds.

By deeply automating fund admin, tax, reporting, and workflows (increasingly with LLMs) and cross-selling multiple products (funds, SPVs, cap tables, AngelList Capital), AngelList reports >80% blended margins and resilience even as net-new fund formation slows.

AI is already materially reducing ‘judgment’ work in venture operations.

AngelList uses LLMs to triage and route ~15,000 complex weekly emails, auto-classify legal docs, detect missing items (e.g., cap tables), and respond automatically—turning what was previously human-judgment work into code powered by years of internal training data.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Startups die of suicide, not homicide.

— Avlok Kohli

The only purpose for a company is just a group of individuals that are coming together to build product for your customers. Any process, anything that gets in the way of that, crush it.

— Avlok Kohli

Definitionally, you don’t have any defensibility on day one.

— Avlok Kohli

We will be the fabric of venture… all the activity that happens in venture, investing, ownership management, rather than being done in spreadsheets and offline, it’s all done in software on AngelList.

— Avlok Kohli

I actually think you need a great team and a great market to come together; otherwise you just have a great team that can burn a lot of cycles on a market that is just utterly broken.

— Avlok Kohli

State of the venture funding market across stages (pre-seed to Series C+)AngelList’s business model, margins, pricing, and platform strategyUse of AI and LLMs to automate fund operations and scaleSeed and micro-fund dynamics, LP behavior, and secondariesCompetition in cap tables and infrastructure (AngelList vs. Carta, etc.)Operating philosophy: speed, anti-process, and product-focused cultureStrategic focus on the US, market share goals, and future roadmap

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