Jaclyn Johnson and Angeline Vuong were pondering how difficult it can be for people to get started with angel investment when they realized they had stumbled upon a startup idea.

Today he is the co-founder. Cherubima marketplace that connects angel investors with entrepreneurs.

Vuong spent nearly five years working in product and development at Opendoor. Founded by Johnson. Create and cultivate.was a self-described “media company for ambitious women” and Experienced both sides of the investment world – as a founder and investor. Before starting Create & Cultivate, Johnson sold his startup. (no subject) in 2016 and has invested in a number of companies, including equipment company Away.

Johnson likened Los Angeles-based Cherub to Raya. Online membership based community for datingin that it matches founders and angel investors based on their preferences.

“You can go on the platform as an entrepreneur and you can go on the platform as an angel investor and both get access to people and express interest based on tags. ,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch. “So, for example, if I go to the app and I'm interested in women-owned businesses in the CPG space doing their Series A or something specific, I'll get a surface deal flow that I I'm looking for the best match.”

With Cherub, investors and entrepreneurs can see who is interested in them on the back end. If they are also interested, they can point it out and it's a match. Conversely, if an investor approaches a founder but the founder doesn't see them as a potential fit, they may decline the invitation to connect. Or if an entrepreneur has a minimum investment of $25,000 but an angel investor is only investing $10,000 per deal, they may see that and not reach out to connect.

“We're kind of using dating app mechanics,” Johnson said. “So we jokingly call it Raya for Deal Flow.”

Membership based

To test the concept, Cherub, Johnson and Wong first launched a weekly newsletter last year that garnered 1,500 signups within three weeks through word of mouth alone.

Encouraged, the pair launched an alpha product last summer that included about 40 companies and provided a way for investors to request a deck. All 40 received requests for deck views, Johnson said. Half of those deck views resulted in introductions, he said, where investors expressed interest in a pitch from the founder. Twenty percent of these introductions were funded in less than three months, raising a total of $1.1 million in capital.

Of those deals, 40% were new angel investors, meaning they were accredited investors who had never written a check before.

Cherub is now in a slow launch process, with 100 startups generating $50,000 in revenue on the platform. Johnson said he plans to expand that to 500, and has a waitlist of 1,500 startups.

Image credit: Co-Founders Jacqueline Johnson and Angeline Vuong / Cherub

Cherub is free for investors to use and charges startups through a membership model. A $480/year membership lets founders list their companies in the directory and includes analytics such as how many people viewed their deck. A Cherub Select membership costs $950 a year and includes more vetting to make the company more proactively visible to investors, Johnson said.

Cherub also helps founders find incubators and accelerators and has partnerships with the firms' respective incubators, Johnson said. Andreessen Horowitz, Dream Ventures and New York Fashion Tech Lab.

Investors also have access to data such as “Updates on how the company is doing, whether or not they're raising and by how much,” Johnson said.

Of course Cherub isn't the only platform that connects angels with traders. AngelList is the largest and most popular. The Israeli crowdsourcing firm OurCrowd is also huge, and then there are offerings from venture firms, such as Hustle Squad. Angel Squad For accredited investors, or others like Jason Calacanis Syndicate.

But Cherub is different in many ways, Johnson says. For one, this Features startups with an emphasis on consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Although it also includes AI companies, hotel projects and apps.

AngelList is a B2B platform, very focused on the tech industry and is perfect for people who already have knowledge or experience in startup investing and, in Johnson's view, are willing to invest large amounts of money. can afford

Then there's crowdsourcing Wefunder, or Republic, which will allow investors to invest small amounts, sometimes as little as $100, in what Johnson describes as “the Kickstarter of angel investing.”

The cherub sits in the middle, she says. For example, like traditional VC firms, the company hosts “founder-funder mixers.” Last year, for example, Cherub hosted a cocktail party in conjunction with Sophia Amoruso's trust fund in which “everything on site was investable,” such as drinks being served and a The pop-up shop is where guests can “shop for any products they want to test drive.

“From this event alone, over $400,000 in deals were generated,” Johnson said.

Angel investor Alan Orr told TechCrunch that he has used other platforms like AngelList in the past.

“However, I felt it wasn't a very personal experience and felt very transactional,” he told TechCrunch via email. “What appealed to me about Cherub was the idea of ​​a fit and social approach to investing,” he said. “I also liked that there were opportunities not only to invest but also to advise brands. There are also opportunities.”

Maggie Rosemaker, founder and CEO of the mental health support app Xantsaid an investor wrote her company a check for $25,000 after she was featured in one of the early versions of Cherub's newsletters and when she met the investor in person at a Cherub event. .

“I think Cherub does a great job of getting active investors in the room with founders,” he told TechCrunch.

Cherub has naturally raised $1.25 million from angels, including Drybar's Alli Webb and Blavity's Morgan DeBaun, among others.