Ep 16 - Dustin Dolginow - Maiden Lane Ventures

Venture Studio

This week, we welcome Dustin Dolginow to The Studio. Dustin a co-founder of Maiden Lane Ventures, the first institutional venture fund built for AngelList Syndicates. Here’s an excerpt from Maiden Lane’s AngelList page: Raising seed capital is unnecessarily complicated. Great angel investors have always helped founders cut through the noise. Maiden Lane's mission is to make partnering with world-class angels more impactful. To do that, we use capital and software to rethink the workflow of seed investing. Seems pretty logical, right? Maybe even a bit boring? Well, not really. Syndicates and funds like Maiden Lane have been called, progressive, disruptive, cute and fraudulent, and everything in between. Today, we’ll learn why. Dave and Dustin discuss the facts behind Syndicates, the massive opportunity for individual investors and founders that Syndicates presents, and the support, critiques and criticisms from others in the venture capital industry. They’ll also talk more broadly about how thought leaders like like Chris Sacca, Brad Feld, Paul Graham and Mark Suster have approached innovation and unbundling in venture capital. This episode is just the first installment of our series on AngelList Syndicates. Later this month, we’ll catch up with Ming Yeh, Founder and Managing Partner of CSC UpShot Ventures, a $400 million venture fund formed to invest in startups on AngelList. Dave and Dustin talk a bit about CSC UpShot in this week’s episode as well. You can find Dustin on AngelList (obviously) and on twitter and Medium under @dolginow.