Website plays matchmaker for start-ups and investors

AngelList wants to be to entrepreneurs what Match.com is to love-seeking singles. The California-based site says that about 10,000 companies and 2,300 investors have set up profiles, and it has already helped a handful of New England companies hook up with investors - some of whom they have never met in person.

You could view AngelList as an emblem of the current frenzy in Internet investing, driven by stratospheric valuations of companies such as Twitter and Facebook. But from an entrepreneur’s perspective, there isn’t a downside. It’s simply a fast and efficient way to get in front of a big group of individual investors (often called angels) and partners at venture capital firms.

So far, AngelList operates as a kind of public service: Neither investors nor start-ups pay a fee to use the site, and there’s no advertising. Cofounder Naval Ravikant says there are no plans to charge. AngelList’s backers include Cambridge venture capital firm Atlas Venture and Dharmesh Shah, a local angel investor and cofounder of HubSpot, a Cambridge online marketing firm.

Traditionally, raising money from angels has involved trying to get a personal introduction to one who might specialize in your particular industry sector, and then setting up a meeting. (Unlike venture capital firms, most angels maintain a fairly low profile.) Another path is to secure presentation slots at meetings of angel investing groups, which bring together angels on a regular basis to hear pitches.

But like all successful Internet ideas, AngelList lubricates, accelerates, and globalizes the old way of doing things. And for a site that is less than 18 months old, it already seems to be dividing investors into two groups: with it, or hopelessly behind the curve.