Marketfish founder Dave Scott tried to raise venture capital for his Seattle online marketing startup last fall. But the entrepreneur couldn't quite hook a deal.  

"...They kept telling us that either the industry didn’t exist, was too crowded or didn’t have enough pain," said Scott, who eventually gave up on the idea of venture financing and set out to build the business on his own. 

Now, nearly a year later, Scott has proven the concept with 30 signed customer and 20 more on the waiting list. And that has led to a cash infusion, though not from the venture capital firms that Scott once pitched. Instead, he opted for an angel round. 

Scott's not saying how much he's raising in the round, which is still open and could close early next week.

But the former chief marketing officer at Entellium did say that about a dozen members from Seattle's Alliance of Angels participated, including Dan Rosen, Jack Breese and Clark Kokich. As part of the deal, Kokich -- the chairman of digital marketing agency Razorfish -- is joining the company's board.

"No one is better at building successful marketing automation companies than Clark, and no VC we spoke to knows as much about it as he does," said Scott. "So for us, it’s a huge win." The financing was reported earlier today by Xconomy.

Marketfish is trying to become an online marketplace for marketing lists, helping sales professionals in a variety of industries more effectively drum up leads. Or, as the company's Web site notes: "We put fish in the barrel -- and let you take aim."

So far, the company has compiled lists from Spin and Tennis magazines as well as the Outdoor Sportsmen Exposition and six other groups. Marketfish puts the subscriber lists from those companies online -- and then rents the names to marketing agencies who may be representing clients who want to target certain groups.

For example, a marketing agency representing REI could decide to obtain the Tennis magazine list or the Outdoor Sportsmen list in order to bolster sales in a specific arena. The lists typically rent for $10,000 to $30,000 depending on their size, with Marketfish sharing a portion of that revenue with the list creator.

"Instead of doing it in a very manual process -- which it is today where you have to call a bunch of people -- for us it is just like Google Adwords, where you can jump on our system, add it to your cart and then you have access to that list," Scott said.

The Spin magazine list, for example, has about 150,000 names on it. He said it is a permission-based list, meaning that people on it have agreed to receive marketing messages.

Customers who utilize the lists include marketing agencies such as DDB, Cole & Webber, Zaaz and others.

Competitors include some established players in lead and list generation such as Worldata, Statlistics, and InfoUSA. Others targeting the space include Pontiflex and NextMark.

Marketfish employs seven people, with plans to add another five workers in the next 90 days. Its advisory board includes former Google employee Eric Facas; Atlas Accelerator founder Mike Crill; Paladin Partners Janis Machala and others.