AngelList Raised $163M For Startups in 2015, Up 56% Year-Over-Year

AngelList, the online platform that had made itself indispensable to early-stage startups for fundraising and recruiting, said it closed out last year having raised $163 million online on behalf of 441 companies. That’s about 56 percent higher than the year before in 2014.

About 40 percent of the deals were private rounds and institutional funds were in about 40 percent of rounds as well.

AngelList has been cultivating investment sources using two different strategies. On one side, they’ve introduced syndicates of individual investors, who can bring in outside capital as if they’re generating a larger VC firm-style investment on the fly. There were 170 syndicates this year, including ones from angels like Gil Penchina and Semil Shah.

On the other side, AngelList has also been developing out funds that are custom designed for its platform. The earliest one was Maiden Lane, but then the company upped its game this year with CSC Upshot, a $400 million seed fund from one of China’s largest private equity firms.

The other key part of AngelList’s product is the recruiting element. The company not only sources funding, it also matches potential hires. This year, active candidates and job listings doubled, with 250,000 candidates and 548,000 matches generated.