Hans-Christian “Gigi” Zappel

Turns Out… My Fund LP Portfolio Beat My Direct Portfolio 😅 Maybe I’m not a bad investor — maybe FoFs aren’t the fallacy we think they are. I’ve been reading several great pieces lately and reflecting on a touchy subject: venture funds of funds (FoFs). Hamilton Lane has hammered this home for years: venture isn’t really an “asset class” — it’s an access class 🚪. • 📊 VC has the widest dispersion in private markets. • ⏳ That dispersion hasn’t narrowed, even as VC scaled — the power law still rules. • 📉 Drawdowns cut deeper here than anywhere else. Translation: pick the right managers and you look like a genius; miss them and you look… well, like me on some of my direct deals 🙃. That’s why the Pattern Ventures benchmarking caught my eye: across 2005–2019 vintages, FoFs (yes, even with “double fees”) actually: ✨ Beat direct VC in the median quartile in 14/15 vintages (+0.68x TVPI). ✨ Outperformed the bottom quartile every single time (+0.89x) — and never fell below 1x. ✨ Smoothed returns, with dispersion nearly halved (0.58x vs. 1.21x). Confession time: even in my own portfolio, my LP fund investments have outperformed my direct ones. Not sure if that makes me a bad direct investor 😅 … or just a better FoF LP. Either way, it taught me something about where my real portfolio chops lie. In hedge funds, double fees kill. In venture, access math beats fee math. So the real question for LPs isn’t: “Do we avoid FoFs?” It’s: Do we build selection capability — or buy it? Because in venture, average is the most dangerous place to hide.🚫 🔖 David Dug Skylar Anurag John Samir #VentureCapital #PrivateMarkets #FundofFunds #LPInsights #VCInvesting #PowerLaw #Dispersion #InstitutionalInvesting Asilica | Redshift Capital | Allocate

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2009: The financial crisis had crushed fundraising. Barely any new capital went into venture funds. Yet the vintages from those years went on to deliver some of the strongest returns in history. Fast forward to today (2024/2025): Venture capital fundraising is at its lowest point in more than a decade. What does that mean? - ⁠Less money will be available to startups over the next years - The bar for raising capital goes up again: quality matters - ⁠Entry valuations will reset to saner levels --> Funds raised now are likely to outperform, just as history shows The paradox of venture: the best time to commit capital is exactly when most people hesitate. Investors (Limited Partners) should lean in now, not when the next boom makes it easy.

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🚨 We just uncovered the strongest correlation to fund launch success that we’ve ever seen.   We work with over 60% of the world’s new VC funds and have built the most detailed database on emerging managers anywhere.   For years, we've been trying to find WHAT correlates with new and emerging manager success.   We studied every angle: demographics, geography, professional background, even personality traits. None of them consistently explained why some managers succeed and others don’t.   Until now.   My colleague and good friend, Michail Michailow ran models across hundreds of variables on all the managers we’ve worked with in recent years.  But none of them seem to reliably predict performance.    Then he looked at one we hadn’t fully considered before: how much managers use AI in launching their fund.   The results were staggering.   ➡️ The more managers leveraged AI, the faster they launched. ➡️ The more they used AI, the more capital they raised from LPs. ➡️ The correlation wasn’t just strong — it was the strongest we’ve ever seen.   The difference is massive. Managers who don’t use AI are operating on a completely different playing field, and we think the gap will only keep widening.   Venture capital is a game of speed. If you’re not using AI, you will be slower to fundraise, slower to close, and you may never reach the momentum needed for your fund to truly take off.   AI has become a DECISIVE factor in who breaks through and who never makes it.   If you want to see which AI tools these top-performing emerging managers are actually using right now, drop a comment below and I'll share more!  

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We're excited to participate in the $26.5mn Seed round of Inversion led by Dragonfly alongside Faction VC, VanEck, Mirana Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Metalayer Ventures, Volt Capital, HashKey Capital, Race Capital, Portal Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Breed, Topology Ventures, Bodhi Ventures, Lvna Capital, Escape Velocity (EV3), Folius Ventures and leading angels Inversion is pioneering a unique private equity-style model to make blockchain technology "invisible" to the end user. The company's strategy focuses on acquiring traditional, low-margin businesses and integrating blockchain solutions to enhance their efficiency, speed, and cost-effectiveness. This innovative approach aims to de-risk institutional investment in the crypto space by offering a familiar private equity product with a clear "margin of safety." The newly secured capital will be used to establish Inversion Capital, a separate fund of at least $500 million, which will finance future acquisitions. Inversion has initially targeted South American telecommunications companies and has submitted several acquisition bids, as blockchain could allow these companies to lower their data purchasing costs, among other improvements. The company's plans to target both private and public companies with large user bases, particularly in sectors such as payroll services, supply chain management, and consumer financial services. The company's first acquisition is expected to take place within the next year, paving the way for a new era of mainstream crypto integration. More here: WSJ: https://lnkd.in/dDWvKm-s Ventureburn: https://lnkd.in/dQ9efYfh

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