What of the following things does your startup have?
> Founders who have graduated from prestigious universities / previously exited companies to known acquirers / worked for a known companies (with known being a brand-name company such as Google, Amazon, Facebook etc)

> Three or more months of statistically meaningful growth (e.g. for easy sake, double digit growth of a number in the thousands)

> At least one investor who is active on AngelList (defined in the ideal state by at least one investment in a company who raised their round through AngelList and ideally whose social graph is connected to "high signal" members of the AngelList network)

If you have none of these things, then at least, have advisors and referrers who have a strong AngelList profile.

And another option is to seek out the AngelList scouts and pitch them directly. They are more open to this than anyone else and I've seen companies with very little traction and very little social proof get featured because a scout believes in the founder and/or the story.

Without any or most of the above, it will be difficult to stand out or build relationships via AngelList, in my opinion.

I assume now AngelList operates on a concept similar to the LinkedIn "degrees of connection" model, whereby an entrepreneur can now send unsolicited messages to investors so long as there is a degree of connection between the investor and the company.

I get a few unsolicited emails a week from companies whose advisers or investors aren't people I follow but that because of the way they determine "connection strength", these unsolicited emails still gain my attention. I assume this is the case for all investors.

So the more that you can build your list of advisers and referrers, the more connections you can solicit.

That said, AngelList's inbound email system is almost entirely ineffective for "cold" emails to really high-profile investors.

Happy to share with you what I think to be your best options for raising profile for your company.