Think of AngelList as a platform for angel investors to leverage their expertise with outside capital. These days, founders don't raise on AngelList, rather angel investors use AngelList to raise capital for their deals. There's a group of people who have very good instinct, connections, and dealflow, but don't have enough personal liquid capital to be writing frequent large checks. There's also quite a bit of capital that doesn't itself have this access. AngelList brings those two groups together; and it all happens privately behind the scenes. Angels can write 100k+ checks out of lightweight funds, or on a deal-by-deal basis. Outside investors can get exposed to high quality early-stage deals.