Smaller venture funds are shifting toward hands-on support for founders, helping with sales, product, and design instead of just writing checks. These managers earn money mainly through carried interest rather than management fees, and the speaker sees growing optimism in this trend.
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There's new emerging managers out there. We're a small fund. There's a lot of other great small funds. And they're, I think, taking a healthier approach to the founders, like in that service mentality, saying like, asking the right questions, like what I can do to unblock you, or if I invest in you, like promising to help you with your sales or products or designs or all these other kinds of permutations of specific areas of value add, I guess. And yeah, I mean, increasingly I'm seeing those folks in the ranks and it's giving me more optimism. And the way that smaller funds, just to talk my own book a little bit, get compensated is usually through carry.