Data wants to disrupt your deal flow (again)

The $25 million fund bases all of its investments off of one key metric that AngelList has been tracking for years: a startup’s ability to hire.When I spoke to Abraham Othman, head of the investment committee and of data science at AngelList Venture, he told me they win deals because they are less adversarial to portfolio companies than other firms. Add in the gender fundraising gap and a more automated decision-making process suddenly doesn’t sound unromantic, it sounds inevitable.For my full take on this topic, check out my TechCrunch+ column: Is algorithmic VC investment compatible with due diligence?In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about a new graduate-friendly fund, lawyer tech and Plaid’s growing patchwork of startups. So it updates on who’s working on what or how long, what project and you can react to that, comment on it and we’re coming up with more and more clever ways for us to sort of capture the data with minimal work from like our network of lawyers.It actually allows you to gain even more transparency and even more detail into someone’s productivity than you would if you were side by side right.Honorable mentions:Image Credits: Mawardi Bahar / EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty ImagesImage Credits: Mawardi Bahar / EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty ImagesFintech giant Plaid acquired verification platform Cognito for around $250 million, TC’s Alex Wilhelm reported this week.