SecondMarket Partners With AngelList to Fund Start-up

Matthew Wong| Inc.com staff  Oct 18, 2012

SecondMarket investors can now create a portfolio of early-stage companies with individual stakes as small as $5,000.

AngelList, the crowdsourcing platform for entrepreneurs and accredited investors, has partnered with secondary trading marketplace SecondMarket to allow investments as little as $5,000 in start-up companies with AngelList profiles.

“Our qualified users can now make small investments in featured AngelList start-ups over the SecondMarket platform, and create a diversified portfolio of early-stage investments with only a modest amount of capital,” SecondMarket said in a statement.

The partnership should boost dealflow through AngelList. Through September, more than 1,500 companies have connected with investors through AngelList and raised over $1 billion in funding, according to TechCrunch.

New York-based SecondMarket gained prominence as the biggest private market for buyers and sellers of Facebook shares leading up to its initial public offering.

The new partnership is an additional opportunity for SecondMarket to diversify beyond trading private shares of later-stage companies. Since Facebook’s IPO, SecondMarket has pushed its investors to opportunities including fixed income securities, fine wine and art, Bloomberg News previously reported.

Aishwarya Iyer, a SecondMarket spokeswoman, declined to comment on the partnership, but said additional details will be released in the coming weeks.