I have decided to stop further work on Employee Led SPVs due to
Lack of founder-market fit.
The potential for founders to disintermediate fund managers and syndicate leads.
Higher leverage alternative opportunities for employees to invest their time and social capital.
I'll cover the lack of founder market fit below and the other concerns in future posts.
Long feedback loop
I can measure the success of code and content in sometimes as early as a few seconds. However, judging startup investing performance could take 5-10 years which is too long of a feedback loop.
Temperament
Becoming a professional investor was a major life dream for me. I developed a unique thesis, productized it, and saw 7 figures of capital deployed through it. I now have enough context to say this career path is not suitable for my temperament. I enjoy problem-solving and implementation, not relationship management. Relationship management would be a major part of bringing employee-led SPVs mainstream.
Operating privately
All relationship building and deal structuring would have to happen privately. CEOs and employees consider all fundraising matters to be highly sensitive. I prefer to work in public mediums with total transparency.
Permissions
An employee, their CEO, LPs, etc., has to permission anything I do in any deal, which is not ideal for me. I instead prefer operating in permissionless contexts as much as possible.
See Part 2