WorldQuant Ventures Lead Investor In AngelList's Data-Focused Early Stage Quant Fund

WorldQuant Ventures, an early-stage investment firm focused on disruptive innovation in technology, data and finance, is anchoring AngelList’s Early Stage Quant Fund, which was researched and developed by Abe Othman.

This partnership represents advances WorldQuant Ventures’ data-driven activity in early-stage investing and is a step forward for AngelList as an institutional capital manager.

What Happened: Intuition, networks and valuations often are the basis for investments. In moving past traditional frameworks, AngelList is launching a new data-driven fund with WorldQuant Ventures as a lead investor.

The fund closed on an oversubscribed $25 million fundraising to begin testing its unique quantitative investment thesis.

“The opportunity to utilize data and AI in the venture investing process is immense,” said WorldQuant Ventures founder Igor Tulchinsky, who is also the founder, chairman and CEO of WorldQuant, the global quantitative asset management firm.

“We’re optimistic that the power of predictive methods can provide significant insight into early-stage startups, especially as technology and the broader external environment continue to evolve faster than ever. We’re thrilled to partner with AngelList on its proprietary Quant Fund and advance data-driven venture investing.”

Additional LPs in the fund include Two Sigma Ventures, KAMCO Invest, Plexo Capital, Tom Tunguz of Redpoint and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant.

Why It Matters: Traditional quantitative analysis with respect to early-stage startup investing has fallen behind.

The reason? A lack of performance-related signals, a release on the matter explained.

“AngelList is uniquely positioned to accrue large amounts of high-quality, trustworthy data by virtue of the volume of early-stage investment and hiring activity that takes place on AngelList platforms. In 2021 alone, funds and SPVs on the AngelList Venture platform invested in 56% of all top-tier early-stage U.S. deals.”

Through data Quant Fund collects, fund participants are able to better quantify business inputs like team strength and investor demand. The result of this approach is automated screening and less human bias.

“Working with the Quant Fund is a great experience,” said Lily Liu, founder and CEO of Piñata, a service that helps renters build credit. “It was hands down the smoothest and fastest funding process I've ever been through. They did their research upfront, committed to a clear timeline, and the team was wonderful to work with.”