Hi fellow founders and VC Friends!
Happy Wednesday! First things first — sorry I've been behind on sending you awesome people 🙏. I've been deep down a work rabbit hole for the past month.
Here's a special edition with a quick update on:
Awesome People Ventures V2
The platform & bounty board
Talent network & newsletter
Awesome People Ventures
I finished deploying Awesome People Fund 1 earlier this year. Since then, I've been exploring new models for Awesome People Ventures V2. I've considered everything from a DAO to fun carry sharing models 🥳. You can follow some of the explorations on Twitter: crowdsourced DAO research, decentralized VC funds, and carry sharing. Thanks to many of you who have evolved my thinking!
I believe community-driven investing and company building is the future. When I started Awesome People Ventures in 2019, I envisioned collectives of talent, advisors, and angels working together to support world-positive companies.
For the past 4 months, I've focused on the Awesome People Ventures Syndicate. My goal was to experiment with deal-by-deal community investing.
We helped founders build syndicates filled with industry experts, customers, and diverse investors. It feels like magic when we stack founders' cap tables with genuinely helpful people and give angels access to hyper-relevant tier 1 deals.
In 4 months, we deployed 3x more capital via the syndicate than in 2 years via Fund 1. We co-invested with First Round Captial, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and other tier 1 investors.
PSA: Everyone is invited to join the Awesome People Ventures Syndicate here (we have 3 awesome live deals!). Access is super important to me so small $1k checks are totally welcome.
That said, it hasn't all been all unicorns and rainbows. Syndicate life is 10x harder than fund life. At times we failed to hit our allocation targets, attract the right investors, and even missed deals because syndicates take forever.
After a few months of exploration, I've concluded that the traditional VC fund model is still the right path (for now). This structure ensures that we can deliver a consistently awesome experience for founders and hire folks to scale Awesome People.
Have no fear, we'll do lots of cool carry sharing, carry drops, community syndicate allocations, and experiments. It's going to be 🔥 and won't look like a boring trad vc fund. You can read some of the original thinking here.
The Platform and Bounty Board
Part of Awesome People V2 includes open-sourcing the platform team. Large funds, like a16z, hire tons of full-time people to run marketing, talent, research, and special projects.
I believe we can work together to build the most helpful platform in tech. Long term, we may even tokenize the community to share in the upside together.
To kick things off, we're testing a bounty board. Here you can see what we're working on and get involved. We have 2 starter bounties. The first is running this newsletter. The second is launching syndicates. Some bounties will be cash and others will be carry 👀.
You can also suggest projects. I'm down to collab on anything that feels on vibe ✨
Stay tuned for more bounties 🥳.
Scaling the Talent Network and Newsletter
We'll be back to our regular newsletter programming next week! Get ready for some awesome copywriters, coaches, designers... everyone you need to 🚀.
If you have super talented freelancer or consultant friends, send me their info and we may be able to feature them 😀
Also, per the bounty above, I'm looking for someone to take over writing the talent newsletter. If you or someone you know would be a fit, pretty please let me know!
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures
If you liked this, ❤️ it below. If someone forwarded this to you, sign up here 💌
Most recent features 🤩
Richard - BD and pipeline expert. Richard has closed clients like Expedia, Square, WeWork, and Airbnb and has worked at the Rebel Fund. Most recently, he worked on building a GTM strategy for a fintech co. He's trusted by companies like Medallia (public co with 10+ acquisitions) and numerous YC companies like CrowdAI (Series A co that’s raised $8M+).
Samay - Your secret storytelling weapon. This year, Samay launched ADMILK, a production company that created a kickass launch video for OnJuno (Sequoia-backed seed co). Samay and co are trusted by founders backed by Polychain Capital, Sequoia, and 500 Startups, by artists like JCole and Angelo Mota, and by film studios like Marvel and Disney.
Eryn - Rockstar EA and founder. Eryn has over 20 years of experience as an EA and founder and now runs an EA agency. She has worked with founders at companies backed by Techstars, Founder Collective, Kleiner Perkins, and more. In their first 6 months in business, Eryn has grown the co 9x, expanded it to 7+ countries, and provided service in 4 languages on referrals alone.
Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
3 Secret Deal Drops 👀
You know what to do. Join the syndicate here to see what’s up.
That’s all for now folks ❤️ 🚀 ❤️