Most entrepreneurs would agree that fundraising is no walk in the park.

AngelList, the social network for investors, functions as a matchmaking service between founders and investors, and aims to make the process a whole lot less painful.

Now a new site aims to make it even easier, by identifying the top angel investors in a bunch of different categories.

AngelList is a well-known service. Less well known is the fact that it has an open application programming interface. Now, using that API, internet entrepreneur and former MySpace developer, Sean Percival, set out to make it even easier for entrepreneurs to connect with the investors most likely to fund their startup.

While you were huddled in the fetal position recovering from an over-consumption of champagne and jello shots on New Year’s Eve, Percival was building the site to help fellow founders refine a short-list of potential investors.

The site, known as Angel5, contains top lists of investors based on region, market and team. Building a mobile game for under-12s? Perform a search for active investors who are also parents. Angel5 would suggest that you connect with Christine Herron, the director at Intel Capital who is also a mom.

Percival, an LA-based entrepreneur, told me in a phone interview that he recently emerged from the time-consuming process of raising funds for his kids clothing startup, Wittlebee. After realizing that developers could tap into AngelList’s API — and its wealth of data about angel investors — he began crunching the numbers to see what patterns would emerge.

Related: Read more about AngelList’s plan to incentive wealthy individuals to make small-dollar investments in hot startups. 

The biggest surprise? Some of the most well-known investors set up profiles on AngelList, but then quickly lose interest. Meanwhile, some of the most prolific investors are celebrities, such as Ashton Kutcher.

Percival is currently looking to hire an associate to help build out and market Angel5, and add more investor “top lists.” Peruse the site, and you’ll currently find lists arranged by categories like “mobile,” “travel,” and “subscription commerce.”

Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList, gave Percival his blessing, and called the site a “good start.” But bear in mind that the lists are by no means definitive: Any deals, markets, and preferences that aren’t contained within AngelList’s database aren’t accounted for.

“It’s an editorial curation layer on top of our data and a simplified interface,” said Ravikant in an interview with VentureBeat.

For entrepreneurs who aren’t lucky enough to live in Silicon Valley and take advantage of the network here, this will be a useful tool to connect with potential investors. At the very least, it’s a great way to initiate a conversation based on shared interests.

Investor road sign image via arka38 // Shutterstock

The dating service for startups and investors announced today that it has helped startups raise over $12.3 million in December alone — a number it is now tracking live on its home page. AngelList said last month that, together with a partnership with SecondMarket, it would be enabling accredited (but not necessarily super-wealthy investors to micro-invest), putting as little as $1000 into startups.

Some might call that the ultimate spray-and-pray strategy, but others would say it’s a great opportunity for smaller investors to safely diversify.

Most of that $12.3 million is a result of an introduction online on AngelList, followed by a subsequent face-to-face meeting or at least live call: a fairly traditional and only slightly technology-augmented process. But a growing number is via AngelList’s brand-new “invest online” feature, which allows investors to make an investment decision — and an actual investment — entirely online.

In other words, Amazon.com for angel investments.

After making the new feature live just last week — which does require significant vetting of participating startups, and the participation of a venture capital firm to lead the investment — AngelList has already helped startups raise $600,000 online.

That’s impressive.

I remember talking to super-angel Dave McClure at Grow Conference this summer. When I asked him for his favorite startup, he answered AngelList. McClure backed up those strong words by launching 500 Startups’ new application process via AngelList just in September.

Now we know a bit more about why.

photo credit: pfala via photopin cc

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He may also take the prize for most F-bombs per sentence of any investor.

I caught up with McClure at the GROW 2012 conference in Vancouver yesterday and spent a few minutes asking him whatever popped into my head. Here’s the interview.

VentureBeat: What’s your favorite startup right now?

Dave McClure: Favorite startup right now that I’m not an investor in … if AngelList is considered a startup, that would be my favorite.

VentureBeat: Gotcha — I know you’ve got a passion for AngelList. I heard that today.

Dave McClure: Totally! Actually, full disclosure, I’m an advisor.

Favorite startup in our portfolio — all my children are beautiful [Laughs] — right now, recent favorite I would say probably Refer.ly. Danielle Morrill — I’m really psyched about what she’s doing. Some older ones that I love: MindSnacks, AppStack, Dulio, SendGrid.

VentureBeat: What’s the hottest space to invest in right now?

Dave McClure: [Laughs] That’s such a lame-ass fucking question.

VentureBeat: Yes, it is! [Laughs] But I’m still asking it.

Dave McClure: Hottest space that I think is interesting would be education, particularly like ages 3-10.

VentureBeat: Most clueless founder question you ever got?

Dave McClure: Oh, that’s like … that could be its own show!

Hmm … most clueless founder question … I don’t want to be too harsh, but understanding basic shit that’s on Venture Hacks or AngelList or something like that. There’s a lot of available information online … basic term sheet stuff or valuation.

VentureBeat: What are the three most important things for startups to get right?

Dave McClure: Customers, problem, and don’t spend too much time on it.

VentureBeat: Best investment ever?

Dave McClure: I think right now that looks like Wildfire, an investment I made when I was at Facebook Fund, and it looks like a 40-times or 50-times return … $350 million exit.

VentureBeat: The biggest cause of startup failure?

Dave McClure: Taking too long to ship or not listening to customers.

VentureBeat: What’s the startup you thought was stupid but ended up rocking?

Dave McClure: Boy, there’s a long list of fuck-ups I’ve made in not investing … stupid is kinda harsh … probably AirBnB, because they had the cereal box thing, and I’m just, like, I’m not getting it.

VentureBeat: You’re in Vancouver quite often. What’s the best thing about Vancouver?

Dave McClure: This view is fucking amazing … we’re looking out at Vancouver harbor right now, which is gorgeous, astonishing.

VentureBeat: What’s the thing that pisses you off most about the recent Twitter API changes?

Dave McClure: Ahh … haven’t been following it too closely and I don’t think it’s necessarily irrational … it’s just like they decided to make some relatively hardcore decisions on how their developer community operates, which is quite different from how it used to operate.

Understandably, I know a lot of people are pissed off, but understandably, I think they need to figure the business model also. Maybe not my choice, but … I get it.

VentureBeat: What’s the most important thing you learned when you were at PayPal?

Dave McClure: Offline anything is expensive. Online is much cheaper usually to do almost anything.

VentureBeat: What’s the one thing you want a do-over on?

Dave McClure: Last 20 years? [Laughs].

Ahh … probably the opportunity to invest in Fab, Uber, LivingSocial, AirBnb … all those I had very significant opportunities with the founders — at least most of those I know personally — and totally fucked that up. [Laughs]

Image credit: John Koetsier

These are the underlying problems that AngelList set out to solve a year and a half ago. And its founders think they’ve met with some success in addressing those problems so far.

The organization, itself an offshoot of startup-focused blog Venture Hacks, has announced some pretty impressive stats to go along with its birthday-and-a-half milestone. So far, at least 8,000 investors have asked to be introduced to AngelList startups. And the AngelList team says at least 400 of those introductions have turned into investment deals.

AngelList is a sort of lonelyhearts service for early-stage startups and the investors who find them fascinating and potentially profitable. The AngelList staff assist in making introductions between entrepreneurs and accredited investors, a service Nivi and co-founder Naval Ravikant think helps to simplify the angel fundraising process.

Part of the problem, says Nivi, is that it’s hard for startups to connect with qualified investors. “There are literally hundreds of success stories and kudos that we’ve gotten,” Ravikant said. “My favorites are usually those of developers and entrepreneurs who were toiling in obscurity, had a great product with traction, but simply didn’t have investor contacts and relationships.

“We basically just connected them to the investor grid and their startups lit up.” Ravikant cites LiveProfile, a startup that had more than 100 introductions and an investment round from Lightspeed Venture Partners through AngelList, and GreenGoose, which, through its AngelList involvement, got two commitments onstage at the LAUNCH conference, had 100 investor requests, and ended up oversubscribed.

But another issue, especially in Silicon Valley, is the crop of would-be angels who don’t know how to get started.

“There’s a set of investors who don’t have access to good dealflow… I’m talking about operators from Google, Facebook, Zynga, etc.,” he says. These folks have the capital, the knowledge and the desire to help startups, so AngelList helps them find startups that appeal to their specific expertise.

However, one facet that surprised Nivi over the past 18 months was the fact that most startups aren’t shy about exposing financial details to a large number of accredited investors to get a fundraising hookup in return. “We have tools for the startups that are more selective to control their distribution more tightly,” he says.

“Being a hacker,” Nivi concludes, “means you’re really passionate about what you’re doing and that you’re not going to follow the rules or conventional wisdom to get where you want to be… AngelList is about taking all that advice and turning it into a product so it’s easier to execute.”

Ultimately, says Nivi, “We can say ‘yes’ to startups more often… We would rather help every startup in the world, all at once. We still can’t help every good startup, but we’re working on it.”

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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