Leading accelerators periodically publish Requests for Startups to signal where the next generation of companies should be built. Y Combinator's Spring list highlights AI-native product management tools, AI-driven hedge funds, stablecoin infrastructure, and AI tools for government and physical work.

These themes reflect the current technological frontier.

But the deeper opportunity lies elsewhere…

The Philosophy of the Opportunity

The largest and most enduring venture outcomes emerge where technological capability collides with massive, underserved structural markets. At Fairbridge, we call this space Progress Gaps: the distance between what technology makes possible and who it reaches.

Venture capital has perfected the development and commercialization of the software value chain into markets of high disposable income. The ecosystem keeps advancing new tools for developers, traders, and knowledge workers. Meanwhile, the foundational systems of society (health, economics, clean environment) remain fragmented, inefficient, and out of reach for hundreds of millions of people.

Fragmentation and dispersion can be easily mistaken for niche, but these markets are structurally the largest and most lucrative because technological adoption remains nascent.

The greatest ROI of this technological moment will come from closing the gap between technological and social progress.

The Markets

Progress Gaps are trillion-dollar markets where demand is accelerating and technological adoption is lagging. We have positioned Fairbridge to scale in this space, and we are just at the beginning of this opportunity.

Health Access. Telemedicine, diagnostics, and AI-driven monitoring have transformed what is possible. For most families, the reality remains unchanged: coordinating care without crushing burden on time and economics, managing chronic conditions, and navigating insurance is still extraordinarily complex. And, basic, nutritious food and preventative routines remain inaccessible to millions who want and can afford them.

Economic Mobility. Financial technology has optimized payments, trading, and lending. And yet, millions of households face even more volatile income, scarce working capital, crippling debt, and depreciating assets. The financial system was built for predictable salaries, stable savings, and stable off-ramping into social security and other programs. It has not kept pace with modern work, accelerating inflation, and the perforation of the safety net.

Livable Planet. Climate innovation has focused on energy transition and much investment has gone into parallel markets e.g., carbon trading. Meanwhile, communities worldwide face the immediate consequences of a changing climate — flooding, heat, water scarcity, droughts. Technologies for adaptation are drastically underdeveloped relative to existing demand.

Fairbridge Request for Startups

We are excited by the intersection of technology and structural demand, backing companies that broaden access to health, economic mobility, and a livable planet. This is where the next generation of iconic companies will be built.

Following Y Combinator's lead, we are publishing our Request for Startups. We have made early, promising bets across many of these areas and are deepening our focus. These requests will sharpen as we partner with founders who have the lived experience to lead.

Health Access

• Care Economy Infrastructure - Platforms that coordinate caregiving, managing logistics payments, benefits, scheduling and freeing up time and economic stress

• Preventive and metabolic health technologies for disease reversal through monitoring, nutrition, and behavioral support

• Health navigation systems to simplify care options and treatment coordination

• Care model innovation focused on reducing cost

• Trust Infrastructure for the Internet - Systems to manage health, to reduce health and financial risk in a low‑trust, digital environments

• Insurance

Economic Mobility

• Trusted, robust infrastructure for everyday financial life - Platforms solving taxes, payments, retirement, liquidity, and working capital for everyday users

• Tools that strengthen family and individual balance sheets - Cost-of-debt optimization, systems to help households refinance and reduce expensive debt

• Income preservation, growth, and diversification in the face of technological change and rising inflation

• Platforms formalizing informal economies - Marketplaces that organize informal economic activity unlocking access to mainstream products and services

• Ironman tools for SMEs and sole proprietors to drive competitiveness and productivity

• Insurance

Livable Planet

• Climate adaptation infrastructure to help communities respond to heat, flooding, and extreme weather

• Solutions that scale available capital and actionable knowledge for sustainability

• Water and food resilience systems to strengthen supply chains and resource management

• Ocean and planetary monitoring infrastructure to improve ecosystem understanding and ameliorate damage to coastal residents

• Accessible and scalable high quality sustainable options to supplement everyday high-volume consumption

• Insurance

Get Involved

If you are building in this space, we want to hear from you.

1. You can learn more about Fairbridge’s mandate and sign up for our monthly newsletter

2. And you can apply for funding

If you are a strategic partner interested in learning more about our programs and to collaborate, please reach out to me. Some of our work includes:

1. Expanding our investment program by finding more exceptional mission-driven founders

2. Our community and platforms activities to catalyze formation of new ventures in the space for Progress Gaps

Photo credit: Venus Ranieri

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that resource abundance — capital, technology, knowledge — creates an unprecedented opportunity for mission-driven founders to build generational companies that solve real problems for real people. Read here

Abundance has shifted bottlenecks, moving the constraint from production to clarity of intent, design, and efficiency.

The Philosophy

Our mission at Fairbridge is to back exceptional founders with unconventional insight that drives social progress at scale. In the past, we measured success through velocity, throughput, headcount, and capital raised. Today, where founder supply is abundant, where money is plenty, and resources for production are cheap and unlimited, capability is no longer enough.

Additional differentiators of legitimacy, quality, and restraint are no longer soft virtues; they are the new competitive edges.

Below is how they show up in some of the companies we back.

Operational Recalibration

1. Legitimacy — Do customers rave about you? What’s the quality of regulatory standards you adhere to? What guardrails define you? Security?

Enduring companies are authentically connected to a cause and operate within clear institutional and “moral” rails — think ingredient quality, regulatory jurisdiction, customer data treatment, internal values and culture. They invest early in infrastructure that enables legitimacy.

Sphere was not built as a generic investment platform. It was designed to bridge climate values and mainstream 401(k) systems, working inside (vs. around) the existing retirement infrastructure and adhering to its rules for customer data privacy, pricing, advertising etc.

GivingCredit is uncompromising about customer data privacy, transparency of methods and the rules for evaluation of creditworthiness, and adheres to FCRA guidelines. Peer-to-peer borrowers can transact without concern for potential negative consequences to their FICO score from data leaks

CoverRight’s promise to help retirees find their best healthplan regardless of how much profit the company makes assures customers that their health and wealth are not up for sale to the highest bidder.  

In all these cases, legitimacy is structural, strategic, and not performative.

2. Quality — What must never break? What must never be compromised?

Ambiguity in value proposition, hidden extraction, or imprecise claims, even when unintentional or unsubstantiated, can be fatal. The recent Vital Farms fiasco is a good example. In a world of low trust and hyper-financialization, customers invest the time to research and spread the word.

Quality means demonstrable superiority, clarity of definition, and consistency of delivery.

Pave defines its value in hard outcomes: Reduced NPLs, Higher approval and underwriting rates, faster decision cycles, ease of integration.

Magicblocks promises a 6x increase in conversion rates through real time AI Sales agents that take two minutes to build and hook, qualify, and close customers, 24/7.

Every bag of product from Seal the Seasons can be tested to verify that the fruit is produced where the bag says it is. New Jersey blueberries are from New Jersey.

3. Restraint — What must not be built? What must be eliminated? What business could we do that we choose not to?

Abundance creates the temptation to overbuild. In the advent of claude, I meet founders who have built impressive technology and want to showcase what it can do. I remind them that technology is not the answer, but just an amplifier of intent. Restraint means testing quickly with customers to build what they need most, focusing on areas of competence, and keeping an eye on time and capital efficiency. This framework from Mike Maples of earned conviction, represents this concept well.

MagicBlocks leverages the team’s earned experience building $200M+ of leads in sales in Mortgage Brokerage, Tourism, Fitness, and Fertility categories. Sales are restricted to those four.

In the past, scarcity of capital, and builders/talent were drivers for restraint. Today, that discipline must be intentional.

In Summary

Companies that win in this new environment might look boring from the outside. The problems they solving are not new. Differentiation is in insight, a commitment to building robust rails underneath, and the desire to get to what customers really want quickly and efficiently. Two mission-driven companies (not in our portfolio ☹) that embody this are:

Nubank — David did not frame Nubank as a disruptor. He simply went out and built a superior customer proposition in an industry that’s lagging. And, while customers demanded innovation, they still want the peace of mind that their money is safe. Nubank nailed that.

Esusu — By embedding rent reporting into FICO and through structuring valuable partnerships with top developers, distributors, and data owners in real estate, Samir and Wemimo have unlocked access to credit for millions on their way to unicorn status.

A few companies in our portfolio are on their way and we want to back more. Please reach out 💚

2025 was a difficult year for startups, but it was also a time where new fundamentals positioned our companies for success. In a new world, where anyone can start a company, and where anything can be built, important questions such as what must be built, for who, and why, are once again at the center of value creation.

The Philosophy

As the biggest bottleneck in building companies shifts from the scarcity of software, the execution problem of firms moves from production to intent, design, and efficiency. The best founders bring conviction and clarity to mission, design, and how resources are marshaled to eliminate waste. This new world presents an unprecedented opportunity for founders to build companies of social significance.

Constraints Drive Value

Our companies are ahead in this transformation and In 2025 they reaped the benefits of disciplined navigation of guardrails in the key areas of insight, capital, and rules. Navigating these constraints compounded enterprise value and deepened their moats. Below are a few illustrations.

Insight – At Fairbridge, we find value by backing founders with unconventional insight that’s informed by real experience. We work with them, patiently, to harness technology and translate insight into markets that deliver enduring economic value.

When I met Dalumuzi right after he founded Notto, he was adamant that alternative credit needed to be licensed and regulated. A few key investors passed, arguing this approach wasn’t disruptive enough and because of the lengthy registration process. Last year, Notto unlocked large revenue opportunities with banking and mobile phone partners who were seeking trusted partners to help them scale in frontier markets of alternative credit. Rich, CEO of CoverRight bet that a marketplace for navigating Medicare needed to be technology first and customer first vs. being an affiliate channel for insurance companies. He has also been handsomely rewarded. Pave’s unique insight that analysis for credit would move away from episodic (periodic FICO draws) to continuous (cash flow-based) has positioned the company as the analytics layer for credit evaluation for consumer and enterprise clients.

Money – We encourage our companies to become demand-driven, i.e., to focus on creating demonstrable value that partners pay for early with minimal cash investment. The opposite is supply-driven i.e., raising money to test and establish markets (think CAC).

Most of our companies didn’t raise capital last year. Instead, they engaged key stakeholders to show value unlocking capital efficiency. One of our most exciting portfolio companies, Sora, was acquired by Flourish, who was desperately seeking excellent solutions for personal financial management. The Sora team could have kept it going, but made a calculated move to optimize investor return, while finding a bigger home to advance their vision. Forte, performed a valuable exercise of sharpening its value proposition, eliminating customer segments that appeared to be a fit, but were unprofitable and redirecting critical resources to pursue a lengthy lucrative partnership with a high-value customer. Seal the Seasons structured a creative deal with its packaging partner that dramatically improved its cash cycle while also spending time with key retail customers co-designing a product line that has unlocked an immediate $50M revenue opportunity. And, on a catchup call with Avanlee, she outlined a strategy to work more closely with and sell to smaller, regional plans while building the capacity to engage larger customers.

Rules – As matter of principle, we believe that when addressing markets that have previously been chronically underserved, delivering exceptional customer value with consistency is the primary driver for outsized return. Authenticity, legitimacy, and results matter. And so, we back founders who build through collaboration vs. disruption.

Our companies invested in the certifications, regulations, and policy engagement that govern their industries. They build relationships with associations and networks that advance their markets. For example, Notto is now Africa’s first licensed alternative credit bureau, Giving Credit is now compliant with Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and over the last two years, Sphere has pursued the arduous regulatory process to allow its products to be eligible for 401(K) retirement plans.

I have many more of these stories of powerful insight we backed that is currently unlocking powerful markets.

In Summary

Market dynamics of abundance – money, technology, knowledge – favor our investment thesis. Our CEOs demonstrate how ambitious mission-driven founders have an unprecedented opportunity to build. Remaining resolute in intent, focusing on establishing demand before funding, and investing in legitimacy are the key differentiators. If this idea resonates with you and you are building I’d love to hear from you

In my next post, I will dive into specifics for what excites us about building this environment of abundance!

I am so excited to end the year on this topic: A new idea I’ve been pursuing this year. If you’d like to collaborate let me know 💚 …

While preparing for Esther’s keynote at Progress Summit, she sent me a draft of a chapter from her upcoming book Term Limits: Time and scale in the age of AI. The chapter is a meditation on how money and power distort leaders. As I read it several times, it pushed me to reexamine myself, bringing me back to Eugene Peterson.

The Setting

Eugene Peterson and Pat Robertson met in seminary in New York and became good friends. After graduation, their paths diverged markedly. Pat became a famous televangelist and builder of big institutions that helped establish the evangelical movement as a formidable political force. Eugene chose obscurity: grad school, a quiet marriage, a small church in Maryland, and a lifetime of intimate listening, mentoring and writing.

Today, I’ll share what I’ve learned from reading Eugene closely, and suggest that his bottom-up model of power offers something valuable for mission-driven founders seeking contagious influence that drives enduring social progress at scale.

The Philosophy

Mission-driven founders need clear, congruent mental models for wielding power. Without them, influence erodes judgment, power distorts purpose, and founders risk harming their employees, customers, key partners, themselves, and the society they set out to serve. 

Peterson Leadership Framework

I began reading Eugene’s books in 2017 when trying to make sense of the politics of religion at that time. I have enjoyed rereading to explore a framework for power. Eugene would likely resist this framing: he believed life could not be packaged into neat frameworks and bullet points. He was known for refusing to give advice and for rejecting easy conclusions.

I’ll take a stab anyway.

Eugene’s model of power rests on a few enduring commitments.

A. Knowledge and love of self

Eugene didn’t try to reinvent or fix himself to an ideal. He focused on being fully grounded in the reality of who he was and what is and to align it with his faith/values. And when there was deviation he sought and offered grace to find greater congruence.

Grounded in place: Raised in Kalispell, in rural Montana, Eugene spent long stretches in solitude and nature. These roots shaped his character: seriousness without fanfare, comfort with silence, and a commitment to unhurried progress. He returned to Kalispell at the end of his vocation, living quietly until his death in 2018.

Confident in self: Eugene’s mother was a pastor and his father a butcher. From his mother, he learned storytelling and from working in the butcher shop, he learned hard work and service. Eugene was intimate with the details of his family’s story; migration from Norway, his grandfather and Uncle Sven’s alcoholism. He learned early to accept life’s messiness and to flourish in complexity.

Vulnerable: Eugene practiced radical candor in his relationships. He journaled and shared with incredible honesty on his occasional struggles with alcohol, on the impact of a distant relationship with his father on his own parenting, on challenges in his marriage, and the persistence of impostor syndrome throughout his career.

B. Elimination of abstraction

Eugene left no room for the ideal. Spirituality had to be lived through the present moment. In bringing attentiveness and dexterity to relationships, every encounter became sacred ground for spiritual practice. Spiritual growth was simply the cumulative of these small, faithful acts.

Getting it lived: When pressed for a grand vision for his congregation, Eugene refused. To imagine what things ought to become, he believed, was to rob what was happening now of its reverence. Eugene wasn’t against growth and progress. He just believed it was impossible to achieve them without participating fully in the present moments that made them.

Direct relationships: Eugene avoided the efficiency of scale, preferring instead to pursue people individually and specifically, building deep relationships of discipleship and accountability. He took spiritual growth seriously, was sometimes intrusive, but always with patience and care for the complexity of every individual context.

A Bayesian mindset: Eugene resisted theological dogma. He read scriptures to enter into the characters’ stories with anticipation, humility and an open mind, trusting new revelation to emerge. And when it did, he updated both his theology and practice.

C. An active imagination

Eugene’s imagination was grounded in confidence that came from a deep command of self and theology. This allowed him to operate from first principles. He was secure to follow and to live truth, not feeling the need to control it.

Words matter: Eugene used concrete, earthy language - true to his Montana roots - to capture lived experience. His bible translation, The Message was an invitation into a richer imagination, where words were the passage to a deeper spiritual reality.

Congruence: A central theme in Eugene’s life was the pursuit of alignment between lived and espoused values. Eugene’s mission for relationships was to help others achieve proficient practitioners of spirituality in their ordinary lived experiences.

Authenticity: In his final interview, when asked whether he would officiate a same-sex marriage, Eugene answered “Yes.” The backlash was immediate. His willingness to cross the establishment reflected humility and courage to live the truth as the divine revealed to him.

What’s Next?  

Eugene inspired a generation of leaders formed in the depth of knowledge, a sustained presence, and lived conviction. These concepts are remarkably difficult to master, but Eugene also preached patience and grace; a concept he termed “a long obedience in the same direction”. I continue to struggle with consistency and projecting into the future when practicing presence, and I sometimes find the emotional dynamics of vulnerability in deep relationships to be overwhelming. But in moments it clicks, it’s magical. My hope in sharing is to encourage mission-driven founders to invest in doing the shadow work that builds the inner fabric required to hold power without being distorted by it.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, a joyful holiday season, and a prosperous New Year 💚 Mark your calendars to get Esther’s book!

I founded Fairbridge, and this publication with a simple conviction: that the most ambitious Founders of our time will be those building for social progress.

Fairbridge’s mission is to inspire, mobilize, and equip founders advancing the frontier of social progress through high-performance, market-based ventures that move markets and societies forward.

This year, we are taking a bolder step toward that vision.

On November 13th at 2pm, we’ll convene for the inaugural Progress Summit, at Rodney’s Comedy Club on the Upper East Side; New York’s oldest stage for truth-telling and reinvention.

We’re bringing together 150 Founders, funders, civic & public leaders, academics & thinkers, and builders for a day of inspiring storytelling, ideas exchange, and collaborative action!

Please apply and share this invitation with the most ambitious, mission-aligned builders in your network. Places are filling fast! Hurry up and claim yours! The summit is free for founders.

The Philosophy

Startups that solve the biggest problems of their time capture the greatest value. And today’s biggest problems of broad access to health, wealth, and a livable planet, represent the defining markets of this century. Delivering progress at scale demands Founders who can lead; who can harness technology and coordinate across complex stakeholders to build compelling businesses.

Q&A

Why mission-driven founders? Government, civic, and community systems once responsible for driving progress are stuck. Founders with sharp business instincts, differentiated insight, and most importantly, the right motivations are best positioned to create scalable, market-based solutions that advance society while generating lasting enterprise value.

Why stakeholders? Progress ventures demand alignment among operators, investors, and partners pursuing the same outcomes. When incentives are coordinated and aligned, value compounds faster, it scales bigger, and it endures.

Why meet in person? Social progress is a collaborative endeavor led by mission-driven Founders.

Why New York and why Rodney’s? New York is the global center for business, for diplomacy, law, culture, and creativity. Global stakeholders are dealing here daily.
And Rodney’s is a venue where truth has always been spoken plainly, yet boldly for a long time. From its stage came Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Mooney, Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, storytellers who made their audiences imagine the world differently. It’s the perfect place to showcase a community tackling social progress.

Who’s speaking? Founders, funders, leaders reshaping industries; your favorite people whose stories reveal how progress gets built and inspire action. This year, we are proud to honor and highlight our hometown builders including Esther Dyson (our keynote!), Murat Aktihanoglu, Dr. Selwyn Vickers and Antonio Rodriguez.

Why attend? This is the community defining what comes after “impact.” A generation of builders who measure success by action, by how deeply they transform markets, how they bring others in, and inevitably how progress follows.

How can you help? In addition to applying to attend, please spread the word to your friends, share on your Linkedin, and on your social media channels. And, please refer us to aligned partners in your networks for sponsorship opportunities.

Join Us!!

A new kind of Generational Founder is emerging; deeply authentic, commercially driven, systems-literate, and unafraid to channel her superior capability and take responsibility to tackle hard social problems. On November 13th, we convene to catalyze this movement, to celebrate those who are building what’s next after impact!

See you at the Summit! And, let’s accelerate social progress together!

There’s been a growing discussion in venture circles that we have gone past the era of non-consensus investing. This thesis posits that building startups for the consumption of downstream investors with deep pockets is the new way to create value.

It’s not surprising that mega-funds are championing this movement. In his undergraduate thesis, John Bogle claimed that index funds should over decades outperform active funds since costs are controllable and the surest way to improve returns was to minimize costs. years later, he created the Vanguard 500 Index Fund. Everyone has a motive.

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this topic with an obvious disclaimer that Fairbridge invests in the earliest stages of innovation. If consensus was the new model, we’d be out of work. It’s not true.

The Philosophy

The proportion of capital devoted to funding true innovation is the best predictor of success for any ecosystem. But, the more this capital aggregates into fewer hands, the higher the risk that innovation is driven by group-think characteristics – comfort, safety, pandering, familiarity, comparable, first-order, incremental, fear, mass psychosis – and not true, uncomfortable “outsider” thinking. The nerds advocating consensus know this well…they were once outsiders. Locally distributed networks of capital are critical to amplify the innovation coefficient.

My Takeaways

Where consensus works

1. Building for downstream can be a powerful proof of concept for smaller funds like Fairbridge. Series A graduation rates to reputable downstream investors are easy to measure and are a generally an objective reflection of the quality of the underlying asset.

2. Great ideas that require significant capital investment benefit from partnering with investors that can deploy tons of capital at once and can afford companies multiple chances to figure it out. This privilege isn’t available to all qualified companies.

3. Large players help boost the competitiveness of an ecosystem. They power the last mile delivery of liquidity to investors, shape policy and regulation, and help with competition against rival ecosystems.

 Where consensus doesn’t work

1. Diamonds in the rough: Innovative ideas don’t always fit the institutional polish that mega-funds require. What happens to great ideas that they can’t pattern match, don’t yet understand, lie outside of their distribution/ sourcing reach, or simply they just don’t want to fund?

2. Supply: Innovation requires a large supply of options upstream. Building for consensus shrinks the size of top-of-funnel. Only upstream managers with access to and with taste of the large funds will remain in business.

3. Waste: And who will be accountable for the hit to global return, the capital lost to bad ideas funded with consensus? Remember companies like Clubhouse, Quibi, Groupon/Living Social, the meal kits cohort, Juicero, Argo? This is an important question because mega-funds invest for important, but vulnerable people – teachers, firefighters, law enforcement etc.

4. Incentives: At scale, management fees alone can deliver a comfortable life to capital managers. Focusing on return becomes harder, also because superior return is harder with scale.

5. Syndication: There can only be so many large funds and eventually all “good” assets end up on the same capital tables. This is not good for return – systemic collapse, too big to fail etc. It’s especially bad for diversity of ideas: different philosophies of company-building, how capital shapes society, differences in personality, taste, sector allocation etc

   “There are many private markets out there, not just one.” - Brian Murray… this is still my favorite statement of 2025. It was Brian’s retort to a gentleman who aggressively tried to school him on what “the big investors” really wanted to see.

How this Impacts Fairbridge 

I recently had a lengthy catch-up about this topic with Ho Nam, the investor for whom I have the utmost respect. His firm is the blueprint for building for contrarian investing. He pushed me on this topic:  The hard thing and the real moat we are building at Fairbridge is the ability to back compelling companies and find ways to build them through full lifecycles. This means continually raising the bar of the founders we work with, a relentless focus on creativity of economic design, leveraging technology to boost capital efficiency, and clever coordination of capital formation within a small group of aligned capital partners. Most importantly, we need to nurture the gumption and team to brave the elements.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, America’s USP is being at the forefront of technological innovation. We make money by selling this innovation to other countries via our bonds, stocks, and attracting the best global talent to work for us. Preserving this advantage depends on scalable, non-consensus models of funding innovation.

Resources

 Here is a podcast where the topic of non-consensus is discussed

 And here is a talk in my bible about successful contrarian investing in truly differentiated companies

A few weeks ago, during a catchup, my friend Tony challenged me to lean into new technology tools and become more intimately involved in building Fairbridge’s operations. Soon after, I found a chance to create a site for a conference we are organizing. What began as a productivity exercise became an emotional journey into how the value landscape is shifting.

The Philosophy

Technological advancement is radically reshaping value exchange. New models let customers pay only for what they use with striking precision. Founders must rethink how they create, communicate, deliver, and capture value or risk widening gaps between customer value and unit economics that destroy market share. This is now the core competency.

The Background

One of the best pieces I read on pricing was by my friend Steve Dupree in 2013, which helped catalyze subscription and menu-based pricing. This model unlocked massive revenue for companies like Microsoft and Adobe, who previously made revenue with the single sale of a cd and launch of an updated version. In this model, customers rarely examine usage, and we all just forget about it. I am a little late to the party, but this latent model seems to have just died. Native AI companies use credits/tokens where you pay only for what you consume. My recent experience with Lovable and Bolt brought this home.

The Story

I called a friend quoted me $1,500 for the conference site. A WordPress template is ~$500, but doesn’t quite get there. So, I channeled my inner Tony and built it myself. After an afternoon of tinkering, I figured I could put this together for ~$100! How exciting! The process that unfolded was a wild experience of emotions and deep questions:

How much could I save? (The appeal of usage-based pricing): $1,500 was not a consideration; the opportunity cost vs. $100 is too high. Plus, the idea of paying only for what I use seemed fair. The site eventually cost ~$250, including learning costs, a deep discount.

How hard is it to build the functionality I need? (Value-based pricing and the premium for avoiding pain): I was incredibly happy with the product.

Adding CRM, payments, surveys etc. was shockingly easy with text and a little code.

How profitable are they? (Margin-based pricing: Your investors are customers too!): The raw material / COGS for no-code tools are the credits they buy from foundation LLMs. As an investor, I pondered how it’s possible to deliver so much value at such a discount. For context, data center spend for 2025 alone is predicted at $400bn. Assume 10 year depreciation and you need $40bn of annual revenue to just recoup this investment. For context Microsoft Office’s and Saleforce revenue are ~$100bn and ~$40bn, respectively. Factor in a modest gross margin and suddenly recouping this investment is a herculean undertaking.

The Outcome
As a founder, no-code tools have unlocked an insane capability to express myself and my ideas through prototyping. As a user, the customer value is unmatched! However, as an investor, I worry; can these models sustain themselves against the enormous capital investment required to deliver such delight? At Fairbridge, we focus on unlocking underseved markets in areas of lagging social progress. Technology is key, but it’s an amplifier of intent. It can only work in the hands of superior mission-driven founders and robust business design.

People to talk to
At Fairbridge, our goal is to inspire, mobilize, and equip founders building for progress in high-value areas: Below are a few people you should reach out to on the topics discussed in this letter. For Founders seeking:

• Help with pricing strategy, I’d recommend a conversation with Ed Lee! This is what he literally does for a living

• The best lawyer who understands how to build for mission talk to Tony Wang! He is the best by far.

• Growth talk to Dupree… I don’t know that he has capacity, but I hear he invented growth

A couple of weeks ago, Scottie Scheffler delivered what is now widely considered one of the most introspective speeches in sports history after winning the 2025 Open Championship at Royal Portrush. In this now famous speech, Scheffler appeared to be engaging in a deeper search for meaning, deliberating the true meaning of success.

In June, I wrote a post making a case for a spiritual practice as a way to strengthen alignment and drive higher performance for founders. So, Scottie’s speech particularly resonates with where my headspace is right now…

The Philosophy

High performing mission-driven founders who apply themselves relentlessly towards the cause, eventually achieve success only to realize that the mission didn’t deliver the ultimate fulfillment they sought. This place can be devastating. It brutally induces a pursuit of answers to deeper questions such as: what then is true success, have I been wasting my life, am I a fraud, what should I conquer next to find ultimate contentment, what is the true meaning of life… The level to which a founder finds clarity in this space drives her towards deep peace and harmony, or towards further anxiety and chaos.

What Can We Learn From Scottie?

In my last post, I briefly touched on hitting a wall when the adrenaline rush of founding Fairbridge ran out. I will unpack more later. While there’s much bigger success to come from Fairbridge, Scottie’s speech unlocked powerful insight.

1. There’s no alternative to consistent application: Scott found success after applying himself to golf relentlessly since 1999 when he was three and didn’t win his first major until 2022. I continue to learn daily that success comes from a deepening respect for the game.

2. The joys of winning are startlingly ephemeral: It took Scottie just 4 major wins to understand that all that investment of blood, sweat, and tears culminated in fleeting moments of euphoria on the field. That magical feeling of success must be bottled, preserved, and transformed into meaningful rituals of lasting joy. I’d guess for Scott, it’s a process of deep appreciation of the family infrastructure that affords him the privilege to pursue his life’s work. If I closed my eyes, I’d imagine it like this: he spends copious amounts of time away from home training vigorously, he misses his son terribly, is stressed and irritable about an upcoming tournament, and when he wins or loses, he enters moments of joy or pain with his family, reflecting on shared sacrifice…

3. Things that truly matter are immeasurable: The pursuit of standardized societal metrics of success—the next promotion, a higher bonus tier, the new country home—has led many down unexamined paths of success. When they eventually inquire, it might be too late. I was lucky to read Clay Christensen’s book How will you measure your life relatively early in life. It inspired the courage to disembark from this hedonic treadmill.

4. Vulnerability is the ultimate courage: I was impressed by Scott’s courage to share candidly while at peak success and directly into the spotlight. There’s even an article imploring the media to NOT punish him for being honest.

5. Hard priority shifts during transitions are a superpower: Scott’s speech articulated a decisive reordering of priorities. Yes, golf matters, and he definitely wants to win some more. But if golf ever interfered with his family, then he would no longer play. Scott stays winning, but is now winning with what I feel is a profound sense of purpose.

Now What?

I’m in a WhatsApp group with some classmates and discussions of the meaning of life, navigating transitions, and priorities are taking center stage. Sophie Adelman, one of my most successful classmates prepared an excellent list of books that help to answer questions. I’d welcome a chance to discuss any of these topics with mission-driven founders grappling with these matters. This is one of the main reasons I founded Fairbridge.

===

Excerpts from Scottie Scheffler’s Speech

Over the past ~7 years, I’ve talked with friends who’ve built impressive careers yet feel something is missing. They are restless for meaningful work that builds legacy and leaves a better world for their children. Most times, I advise them to start a company. Recently, I shared my journey during TechWeek and received great feedback. I decided to share more broadly.

Here’s a link to my talk

The Philosophy

In an age of moral drift and overstretched governments, founders have an unprecedented leadership opportunity: to mobilize complex stakeholders behind the delivery of enduring market solutions to billions of underserved people.

So, How Does One Start A Company?

Here is my four step process.

1. What bothers you?
The causes we care about choose us and won’t let go until we take responsibility. Our family values, words that resonate deeply, our experiences, are painting a latticework. To unlock clarity and precision, dig into:

• Your origin story explains why what matters truly matters and lends you the authority to build.

• A grasp of your worldview, how you believe the world ought to work, forms a foundation to engage with reality.

• Your wish list, your answer to what’s missing that’d make the world meaningfully better, sparks purpose, inspires imagination, and drives committed action.

 2. What are you good at?
Many of us never stop to define what we do well and why. Such knowledge is vital for business design and team building. Here’s where to look:

• Your current job is a goldmine for unconventional insight. For example, after spending 15 years at Amazon, Wayne, a good friend, realized his longevity was due to a cultural fit with his quirky personality. This has led him to start building a company to help neurodivergent candidates thrive in the workplace.

• Feedback from career coaches or structured exercises with trusted friends can provide blunt, actionable insight.

• Cover the base by investing to learn communication, leading people, and financial statements.

 3. Where is the opening?
A winning idea combines what you care about and what you are good at. Get specific:

• A white space: What is a real, unaddressed problem impacting many people in your area of responsibility? What is your proposed solution?

• Economic proposition: Tie your solution to a clear value proposition for customers and your capital providers. And think carefully about distribution.

• Infrastructure and roadmap: Start to define a vision/BHAG, a mission/mandate, and the culture/means to pursue the opening.

4. Are you prepared?
Three years after founding Fairbridge, I hit a wall. The new project adrenaline suddenly dried up and I found myself depleted, discouraged. From the other side of that slump, here’s what I wish I had done differently:

• Regret vs. Opportunity: I was sprinting, fueled by regret and a desire to make up for lost time rather than embracing the privilege to channel strong conviction through my capability and life experiences.

• Self-awareness vs. Self-improvement: Initially, I fell into the trap of beating myself up for not meeting self-imposed impossible standards. Today, a strong command of my strenghts helps me to fill the gaps through team and structures with self-confidence.

• Pacing vs. Speed: I wanted to do it all immediately and eventually ran out of runway—emotional, physical, financial. Everything takes at least twice as long and it’s vital to slow down, build reserves, replenish, survive. The secret…community.

Why All This Matters

We need many many more of them, and they need guidance because:

• High opportunity cost: Brilliant operators constantly receive lucrative, tempting offers that don’t always align with deeper purpose.

• Capital oversupply: There are many private markets out there. Clarity of purpose makes it easier to find values-aligned investors.

• Compounding: Conviction and clarity in pursuit of purpose provide the stamina to stick with it for the long haul. The results of patient application can be astonishingly transformational.

When you get a chance please read Bo Burlingham’s book Small Giants. Ho Nam put me onto it a few years ago. I read it often and it captures the essence of my vision for the world.

**For aspiring mission-driven founders, I’m here for you. Fairbridge aspires to be the earliest partner of choice for founders driving social progress 💚 

As a child, my mother was an entrepreneur trading with local Indian merchants and my father was a controller with a national retailer. My parents left their roles to become pastors. Founding Fairbridge was inspired by my upbringing steeped in business and service. Last week, I completed the nine-month Gotham Fellowship designed for executives looking to integrate faith and work. It was a rewarding experience. In this note, I wanted to advocate the consideration of a spiritual practice to a fitness repertoire for mission-driven founders. I also wanted to organize and solicit feedback on the raw material I am working with for mine.

The Philosophy

Trust in institutions is collapsing rapidly. Mission-driven founders have a rare opening to step up, lead and drive societal progress. And, while many already invest in mental and physical fitness, a third pillar that’s often neglected, and that can unlock powerful alignment is spiritual fitness. To be clear, this isn’t about morality. It’s about integrity at the core; a foundation that nurtures inner strength and leads to clarity of purpose that fuels bold, high-performance leadership and extraordinary results.

The Proposed Framework

A solid practice begins with building a strong core, developing the right philosophy of work, and entering the right relationship with the divine.

A. Strengthening the core

A strong core is a result of gaining command of our true self, our real beliefs, and from a commitment to continuous examination.

1. An intentional worldview: Our default worldviews comes from ambient consumption. They are more pre-cognitive and narrative than propositional and intellectual, meaning they are shaped by story, imagination, and lived habits. Effectiveness begins with regularly examining and truthfully living out (functional vs. philosophical) our worldview while engaging others and culture with conviction.

2. Tapping into the power of origin: Our upbringing is the raw material from which we build our purpose. To lead and live with clarity, we must engage our inner landscape with courage and honesty. In his song The Catch Up, Drake says: “Being humble don’t work as well as being aware.”… Virtue is not the destination; a true understanding, acceptance, and coherence of self is. Grace abounds, not so we can abuse it, or flog ourselves, but to gain sober perspective of our true selves so we can show up with power.

3. Application: A firm grasp of self is the fertile ground in which to invest our talents, treasure and time in contribution to the world. The mission-driven founder applies herself through faithful presence. Faithful presence means being vocationally excellent and socially engaged while rooted in integrity. It’s managing to engage culture without losing one’s unique differentiation and achieving influence without seeking domination.
   

B. Executing with humility

I have witnessed many mission-driven founders suffer burnout, become cynical, and enter into despair when they realize the world doesn’t give a blip. Removing ourselves from the center of our work is incredibly liberating.

1. Serve the work only: In her paper, Why Work. Dorothy Sayers says “The only true way of serving the community is to be truly in sympathy with the community, to be oneself part of the community and then to serve the work without giving the community another thought. Then the work will endure, because it will be true to itself. It is the work that serves the community; the business of the worker is to serve the work.” The gallantry of saving the people unfortunately carries the fatal seeds of resentment.

2. All work counts: In her book Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle proposes an excellent philosophy of work, encouraging us to rid ourselves of the crushing burden of significance, and rather to approach our work as contribution to a larger collective. Think of a lake…the great, but few contributors are rivers, others are tributaries, and most are a trickle, but they all feed to the beauty of the lake. This humility allows the divine to multiply our work beyond the limitations of our insecurities, imagination, and reach.

3. Integrity matters: Tenets of moralism: justice, fairness, equity etc. are powerful tools. For the mission-driven founder, integrity means to wield them with conviction informed by discernment of content and context. And because founders operate in contested spaces, they bear the added weight of engaging competing worldviews with judiciousness. Integrity is not a moral imperative, it simply is pursuit of excellence through words and actions that are aligned to a set of principles. Founders with clarity can preserve the mission integrity for longer as their ventures scale.
   

C. Channeling the divine

The power of the divine has been neutered by a fixation on moral checklists, endless debates on who belongs, and apocalyptic speculation. Meanwhile, God invites us all to be humble collaborators in the critical, creative, and stimulating work of stewardship; to harness our distinct giftings and quirks, to weave a beautiful tapestry. We are invited to simply be conduits of what is already happening:

1.  Creation is good: A philosophy of life that begins with what’s wrong is crippling. In it’s original design, the world is a good place, the design is perfect. Humanity’s work enters the divine when it contributes to the restoration of that order.

2. Experience in community: The divine accomplishes its goals in community. Community provides the creative tension, the accountability, and the unexplainable energy that power big pursuits. Community is messy, but finds success through gratitude, promise-keeping, truth telling, and hospitality.

3. Divine work can't be contained: The divine achieves its objective of advancing human flourishing through confounding methods, methods that often defy human reasoning and logic. Inspired work is good. And, good work invites us in: It's objectively excellent, delights deeply, sparks inspiration, does not discriminate who it serves, and most importantly it can be created by anyone
   

In summary

For the mission-driven founder, a spiritual practice can open the window for a special collaboration with something much larger than the self: A partnership with the divine achieved through reinforcing alignment within the self and working with others in humility to unlock revelation that drives extraordinary results.

FYI.

I didn’t want to bother everyone with a resource list that leans towards my faith of choice, but for those who are interested in discussing spiritual practices or in learning more about how we can walk together, or in the curriculum of the program I just completed, please reach out.

Last November I wrote a post explaining that companies that succeed must provide compelling solutions to underserved markets, unlock scalable distribution, and manage risk and liquidity. I also argued that companies that fail create value on which future innovation builds upon.

SympliFi, one of the companies I was most excited for in our portfolio at Fairbridge wound down its operations recently. And, I wanted to share what we learned from that process.

The Philosophy

Fairbridge Limited Partners back us to take bold, calculated risks by betting on founders who are reimagining broken systems and building entirely new models to tackle urgent social challenges in large, underserved markets. This is not easy work. Some companies will fall short. But the ones that break through transform their markets, deliver extraordinary customer value and generate outlier returns for our investors and for society. For thesis-driven funds like Fairbridge, even failure sharpens our edge. Honest reflection of what didn’t work, what needs to change, what is unacceptable deepens our insight, raising the odds that the next bet changes everything.

Why Fairbridge invested in SympliFi

SympliFi was founded with an ambitious vision to harness diasporic capital for productive uses in emerging markets. SympliFi’s premise was to leverage the growing market of remittances, and familiar peer to peer lending to grow capital available for small business lending.

When evaluating investments, we assess companies across four criteria:

1. Progress Gap / market: Global remittances reached ~$1 trillion in 2024 with $685B going to LMICs. Additionally, Africa in particular, significantly lags other continents in capital per capita (see appendix).

2. Team: Maurice and Gregoire, SympliFi’s founders cut their teeth at the micro lending giant Groupe Boabab, and new the market cold. They lived and breathed the markets they served, bringing in unique insight and were excellent operators

3. Economic design: SympliFi made it so easy for diasporans to earn extra yield in a ZIRP environment while providing much needed financing to small businesses seeking lower APR alternatives to exorbitant bank financing

4. Affordability: We were excited to invest in a company with global potential, with superior capital efficiency, and with an attractive valuation

What went wrong?

Digital wallets and analytics: Small businesses in emerging markets transact via digital wallets, connected to their mobile phone providers. Lenders need proprietary infrastructure to comprehensively understand credit worthiness. SympliFi did not invest in this critical layer, effectively being relegated to an affiliate-based sourcing and underwriting model
Boots on the ground: Relationship-building for small business lending relies heavily on founder-led sales in the earlier stages. SympliFi founders did not fully commit to being on the ground, flying in instead from London and France
Macroeconomics: Rising interest rates in the west created opportunity cost for yield lowering profit margins and threatening the volume of capital available on the platform

We love the market for productive cross border capital!

While we are no longer investing in Africa, we remain bullish in our thesis of remittances as a credible source of capital. And, since our investment in SympliFi, p2p and small business lending; driven by alternative proprietary rating systems and funded by creative retail sources of capital has seen significant growth. We are actively investing in these spaces.
Remittances are a US market: Over 30% of all global remittances originate from the Unites States. Remittances are a US market
Remittance markets are resilient: In 2024, global remittance flows were $905bn, a 6% year over year growth against challenging macroeconomic environment
Technology is stronger: Technology rails for moving capital are becoming faster, cheaper, more scalable, and compatible with institutional regulation (see appendix)  
Remittances is a sleepy market: Imagination in the remittances space has been limited. Most new startups have focused on just improving cost and speed on a basic underlying transfer product. Key areas of Fx, yield, insurance etc. remain largely untapped
Capital gaps persist: Capital gaps in emerging markets, especially in Africa continue to widen due to increased pressure on local government budgets away from local business investment and forex scarcity from local businesses (see appendix)
 

We are doubling down

For the brave and creative founder, the opportunity for directing massive pools of diasporic capital towards productive use is an opportunity ripe for the picking. Please reach out to us or introduce us to compelling founders you have come across!

Appendix

Availability of capital for investment by region -2024

Protocols for Cross border movement of capital

A couple of months ago, I shared a note on how mission-driven founders can stay tethered to the high purpose that sparked their vision—while building companies that retain mission integrity at scale. Since then, I’ve had some deeply engaging conversations with a few of you that have challenged me to think more expansively.

What keeps coming to mind is this: To unlock truly transformative social progress, we must go beyond the guardrails of conventional ethical frameworks. 

The Philosophy

Ethics-led approaches have been foundational to the rise of mission-driven business. But they can also be limiting. Too often, they produce companies that, while true to form and compliant to the code, are stunted in imagination, freedom, and energy that drives truly groundbreaking impact.

A better framework might begin with a different question: What level of risk is required to achieve the scale of transformation we need?”

Limitations of the Ethical Lens

Ethics-based frameworks have defined the first era of investing for social progress. Impact investing has grown rapidly—from $715 billion in AUM in 2020 to $1.7 trillion by the end of 2024. That’s a 2x jump in five years, with a 17% CAGR. And yet returns have often lagged those of traditional private equity. Why? A fundamental misunderstanding of risk.

Some specific challenges:

Mispriced risk and reward: Startups have always earned alpha by solving hard, meaningful problems of their time. We should expect superior returns from those tackling our most urgent social challenges. Yet the debate around concessionary returns—impact or return, triple bottom lines, etc.—reveals a risk model still in flux. We haven’t yet resolved true alignment between capital and opportunity.
Detached capital: When risk is misunderstood, capital often comes from misaligned investors—e.g., those who are in it to feel good, to dabble without conviction or commitment, or to exercise influence. NIMBYism is one example of this kind of detachment: progress is welcomed, just not too close to home.
Prescriptive funding: In sincere efforts to do good, many funders over-engineer solutions—directing capital to directly affect outcomes e.g., headcount diversity or job creation without thinking about systemic implications. When knowledge and power are disconnected, prescription leads to inefficient allocation of capital that reduces global return.
Bureaucratic creep: A prescriptive environment spawns process. In impact investing, this means layers of frameworks, metrics, and compliance obligations that can be overwhelming, especially for early-stage teams who are starved of resources.
Proxy thinking and system gaming: Without a GAAP-like standard for impact measurement, proxies become performance. And when that happens, gaming the system isn’t just possible—it’s rewarded. The result? We erode both mission and market performance.

Reimagining the Framework: Investing for Social Progress 2.0

At Fairbridge we are betting on a big idea that investing for social progress will be a distinct market segment of venture capital—intellectually rigorous, culturally relevant, high-performing, and scalable.

Here’s the framework we are building towards:

Pursue good quests: We pursue founders who are bold, imaginative and are pursuing good quests. We are mobilizing imagination, capital, and energy to empower these founders to pursue truly groundbreaking solutions for pressing social problems.
Promote the gift of risk: The most powerful thing capital can give is the permission to take risk. That means patient, aligned partnerships that create room to fail, recalibrate, are actively engage, and are committed to the realization of alpha in the long term.
Technology as a force multiplier: Technology is a radical tool to unlock for the reimagination of the economic design of existing business models or the creation of new ones to unlock markets for underserved markets. Our goal is to scale the ability to harness it at scale.

We invite and welcome your participation to continue to elevate our thinking and to work to advance innovation and make investing for social progress cool! 💚 💚 💚

Dear Fairbridge Partners,

I hope that that this quarter has been productive. I wish you balance and renewal this spring equinox! I am excited to share a comprehensive annual update at a defining moment in our journey at Fairbridge.

Founding Fairbridge was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream—merging my personal experience, a passion for investing and uniting people, technology, and capital to address critical societal challenges.

After moving to the U.S. in 2002 and observing many of my well-to-do college friends’ families fall out of the middle-class, it became clear to me that bridging the gap between technological progress and social progress would be one of the most important investment opportunities of our lifetime. This insight set me on a journey that prepared me for Fairbridge. The pandemic, the rapid advancement of technology, and the current political environment have added further clarity to the significance of Fairbridge’s thesis.

Where we are today—Fairbridge is primed to scale

I launched Fairbridge with strong conviction and clarity of the problem, but without the classical background of a traditional venture firm valued by large institutional investors. This allowed us more time and freedom to test and develop our business model. We also deliberately avoided easier paths—such as an explicit focus on narrow customer segments and verticals, or quick hiring—that could have positioned us to raise capital faster, but would have limited our scalability and impact down the road. The last three years have been an intensive journey of rapid learning and growth to build the foundation to pursue this opportunity—refining our investment thesis, sharpening our value proposition to founders, and strengthening our operational capabilities. We have worked tirelessly to transform our bold vision into a sharpened strategy and a compelling value proposition, supported by robust operational infrastructure. We are positioned to scale in partnership with values-aligned strategic partners. In the startup world, we call this finding product-market fit. I will elaborate below.

Market landscape—The market is ripe for addressing social problems

A rapidly changing venture landscape is challenging fund managers to answer difficult questions about their firms’ strategy and differentiation. Today, there are thousands of investment managers competing for the same capital and investment opportunities. Our approach of starting with a difficult problem instead of solving for a capital strategy has allowed us to build a differentiated business. We are confident that investors seeking alpha will find our proposition compelling. We are strategically positioned to benefit from the key factors affecting the venture industry:

AI and rapid technological progress: AI is challenging all conventional wisdom for how companies are launched, financed, and scaled. Efficiencies from AI are allowing small teams to scale quickly with small sums of capital, which will shift the power dynamics of our industry. Venture firms will require something extra to win competitive deals. Additionally, supercharged capital efficiency from AI will create a sub asset class where venture-scale return can be achieved with businesses of much smaller scale. And, finally, we are witnessing a technological shift from SaaS to AI, increasing technology’s ability to solve customers’ problems more directly without having to learn complex technological applications. This shift is similar to when Shopify arrived, allowing millions of ecommerce entrepreneurs who didn't know how to code a shopping cart to their site to sell online immediately without needing Demandware. 

(Geo)politics and the social environment: The current polarization of political allegiances to the extreme right and left is the result of a widening rift between technological and social progress that has caused worsening income inequality and disparity in the access to the benefits of human progress. It’s clear that the public, civic, and cultural institutions, traditionally tasked with addressing these discrepancies are insufficient and need help. Today, there is a growing number of people, desperate for decent service and willing to pay for it, but still cannot access products and services they need. This is a massive market gap.

Fundraising, opportunity cost, and inflation: The golden age of private equity investing buoyed by a permissive interest rate policy came to an end after the pandemic. This change has ushered in a difficult economic and social environment, making it challenging for funds and startups to raise capital. Limited Partners are flocking to credit, to larger venture funds, and have suspended allocations to programs that benefited funds led by underrepresented managers. Fairbridge deserves to exist because our differentiated thesis contributes meaningfully to global return—there is a unique opportunity to generate alpha by leveraging technology to address real needs of billions worldwide who are currently underserved by traditional venture.

Fairbridge business update—Building a differentiated business to confront a critical need

Fairbridge’s grand vision: To close of the gap between technological and social progress. We fund technology startups that create markets delivering benefits of human progress to the underserved. We execute our vision by being the earliest institutional partner (pre-seed/seed) of choice for the grittiest founders in our space. Our goal is to catalyze investment in social progress by creating a robust market upstream that serves as a pipeline for later stage investors.

Why now? Today, there’s no real venture capital market for tackling social problems. The brightest minds—investors and founders alike—are pursuing grand conquests like space and AGI, chasing high-income consumers, and courting corporate or government contracts. Impact investing? It’s bogged down in bureaucracy, paralyzed by the inherent tension between financial return and "impact." But the tide is shifting. We are tapping into the growing wave of high-caliber founders who want to fix the planet and the power of technology to create viable markets for lower-income, high-value segments. Add to that the $600BN waiting in the Giving Pledge and $250BN in DAFs sitting idle—all funds looking for a way to fund social progress. The opportunity isn’t just ripe; it’s urgent.

A sharp business model

What we are good at / a commitment to relationships: Our unfair advantage lies in our deep understanding of social challenges and our ability to build intimate, trust-based relationships with purposeful founders—especially immigrant entrepreneurs—early in their journey. Each fund is structured with a diversified portfolio of 30-40 investments, while keeping reserves for follow-on support to a few standout winners. Our advantage works best with smaller funds—an approach we can scale by growing our team or writing larger initial checks. Our philosophy is to align incentives with our investors and win through carried interest
A compelling value proposition: Our primary objective is to convert our companies into assets that pattern-match what Series A investors seek—making them must-have assets. Series A graduation is a key metric. We achieve this by helping our portfolio companies find product-market fit, scale their go-to-market strategies, and by facilitating table-setting with aligned stakeholders who unlock incremental return potential—e.g., through non-dilutive financing, strategic partnerships, and customer contracts
Investing super-early in the right startups: We prefer to be the earliest partner of choice and to invest up to $500K in B2B technology businesses
A focus on the widest discrepancies: We target areas with potential for highest return: Economic mobility, Access to health & wellness, and Access to a livable planet
Starting with North America: Progress Gaps are a massive global opportunity, but we are focused on building a commanding presence in North America first

Fairbridge goals for 2025—Strengthening the rails

Team building: Laying the foundation for Fairbridge has been rewarding and humbling. I am excited to invite a partner to the firm who shares our vision and mission, and can help propel us forward. Finding the right partner for a mission-driven fund is challenging, and I'm counting on your support in this critical endeavor. Additionally, we are hiring an associate who brings passion for our space, exceptional capabilities, and a strong drive to build networks that enhance sourcing and portfolio value
Strengthening proprietary sourcing: We are establishing ourselves as thought leaders in Bridging Progress Gaps^SM . Our sourcing strategy leverages insightful content that challenges the industry through its thought leadership, delivers demonstrable value to founders, and positions us as an essential part of their "tribe". This year, we are streamlining our sourcing channels to concentrate on high-value networks. We are also actively engaging with platforms that amplify our thought leadership and allow us to demonstrate our expertise to a broader audience  
Scaling the brand: Sharpening and promoting broader visibility of our Bridging Progress Gaps^SM brand is paramount and ongoing. Our focus this year is to unlock distribution through creative and efficient brand and performance marketing. Building upon our strengths in written content, we're adding video and offline events and cultivating strategic affiliations and partnerships with influential organizations and thought leaders in our field to further solidify our market presence
Reinforcing operations: We continue to strengthen our operational foundations, aiming for professional excellence. By the end of Q2, we will launch a comprehensive, end-to-end technology operating system designed to enhance our operational efficiency and professional capabilities, ensuring Fairbridge is well-positioned to scale sustainably and effectively

We need your help with Bridging Progress Gaps^SM 

We have opened our data room for Fairbridge’s second financing round to our extended network. We view this as our firm’s Seed financing round. Now that we have arrived at product-market fit, we are investing to grow our funnel of qualified leads and to execute on the best opportunities. We are also investing in our firm’s operational capabilities, especially people. Here is a link to our summary material [Please reach out to me for link]. Our goal is to conclude fundraising by the fall of this year. As you review the material, you can support us in the following ways:

1. Providing thoughtful feedback

2. Introducing us to friends, colleagues, or partner networks that are mission-aligned, and

3. Amplifying Fairbridge’s vision within your networks and spheres of influence

Please reach out to me with your feedback and thoughts.

Portfolio Update—Resilience in a difficult market

[Ping me for the details]

Our asks—It takes a village to build a fund

1. Team: Introductions to a partner-level hire. Ideally with experience / track record investing in the digital health space or with deep knowledge and passion for investing for social progress

2. Marketing: 

   1. Introductions to a marketer with capability to manage a budget for performance spend. We are active on the following platforms: Linkedin, YouTube, Beehiiv, etc.

   2. A partner to help us with our offline events series

3. Networks: Introductions at senior level executives at these organizations: Emerson Collective, Council for Inclusive Capitalism, Omidyar Network, Skoll Foundation and more

Gratitude—It takes a village to build a bridge

Mission aligned investors are the biggest moat for an early stage startup. I founded Fairbridge with a grand vision to build a practice to entice the best founders to tackle social problems. We do not yet have unicorn exits, but we have made tremendous progress towards our vision. I have benefited from your relentless support of and patience. Thank you. We are not going to stop until we win!

Happy spring!

My very best,

-David

==

APPENDIX

We read a lot! Here is some of what we are reading

Private equity shares the wealth

Alpha in hard societal problems

Funding Utopia

An investment approach for maximizing impact

In the swarm – Digital prospects

Startup founders turning to seedstrapping

Why are more young people getting cancer?

AI will divide the best from the rest

The troubled energy transition

Choose Good Quests

A happy Valentine’s day to you all❤ Love is such a beautiful thing…

Anyway…Since the Deepseek kerfuffle, I have fielded many questions from investors and friends on AI. I wanted to share my broader perspective on technology investing. Generative AI is the latest in a series of technological waves that started around 2008 with the Mobile & Cloud revolution. We have since had Deep Learning, Blockchain, Web3, Biotech, Energy Tech etc. The AI wave is unlocking previously unimaginable efficiencies across industries and business functions while driving us towards Artificial General Intelligence, where technology functions like humans and generalizes many of the technical competencies previously considered critical to entrepreneurial success.

The philosophy
Technological development is strengthening the foundational capabilities that accelerate human progress at an unmatched rate. Unfortunately, it’s also excercebating the Matthew Effect: positioning those with initial advantages—whether in wealth, knowledge, fame, or resources—to compound their advantages at an even faster pace, and resulting in greater societal disparity.

Mission-driven founders have a generational opportunity to deploy (all of) technology to create markets that establish viable baselines (>1) from which billions of people worldwide can begin to participate in the compounding benefits of technological advancement. At Fairbridge we call this the work of Bridging Progress Gaps^SM. The preservation of our way of life depends on our ability to deliver progress to all.

Fairbridge invests in technology applications
We divide technology into two categories: Infrastructure and Applications.

On infrastructure: Only a few large players with deep pockets, patient capital, and relevant raw material can truly benefit from investment in infrastructure. The ability to collect tolls is also critical. That’s why tech incumbents and large corporations are the leading investors in AI infrastructure.

The infrastructure cost curve: News that Deepseek cost 6% of the total investment in OpenAI is the latest evidence for how quickly infrastructure development costs fall. We have seen this many times with the cost of solar modules, organic food, lithium batteries etc.

Infrastructure as applications? There are cases where specialized infrastructure doubles as applications in highly valuable niches. Companies that come to mind are Virgo and DentalXr. We invested in TherapyIQ, a provider of infrastructure for fast setup of therapy practices to broaden patient access. We also invested in PaveFi, the analytics infrastructure for credit firms to democratize lending.

Our favorite applications: Success of technology applications depends on timing i.e. the readiness of the infrastructure’s capabilities, of the market to embrace a solution, and a company’s ability to combine the two into a sustainably profitable business.

In an era of peak technology, leadership is the strongest predictor of success

Betting on the best Chefs: We invest copious amounts of time with Generational Founders who deeply understand how technology can be applied to create new markets that solve real problems. They bring unique insight into their problem, often driven by lived experience and domain expertise. And, they are adept at turning key ingredients into consistently excellent customer experiences and scale them into enduring businesses.

Why focus so much on founders? Today, the capability and trust in institutions in all areas of public good is at an all-time low. Accountability mechanisms—Chinese walls, regulation, enforcement, ethics, incentives—are compromised.

A call for leaders to step up

Technological development is rapidly reinforcing the quality and efficiency of rails for advancing human development. It’s driving the fundamental reimagination of business models, ushering a generational opportunity to build companies of great significance: Companies that unlock a viable baseline for billions worldwide to access the compounding benefits of technological progress. We are calling all Generational Founders to step up to the plate. Reach out 💚

At the end of 2024 I took time off to reflect. I wanted to answer a fundamental question: “Do I respect the work I have done at Fairbridge to date, and what must I do (or not do) better so that when I look back at the end of it all, I’ll be proud of my life’s work.” In this instance, success is the achievement of a firm’s desired economic outcomes within the philosophical, moral, and ethical parameters established by the founder at the start.

The philosophy
Many of today’s successful companies were conceived by founders inspired by high purpose: Google founders wanted to democratize information and do no evil; Zuckerberg wanted Meta to bring people together and make the world more connected; Jobs founded Apple to channel technology for creative expression and individual empowerment. After some time, a force, let’s call her Avarice Force, begins to gently, but persistently put this high purpose to the test, proposing compromises that initiate drift and eventually derail a company to a place and shape that the founder no longer identifies with. At the peak of her powers, Avarice is inevitable and will crush those who resist. Founders who can withstand Avarice have a real chance to build enduring companies that they are proud of and that deliver truly differentiated value.

Investing early in high purpose
At Fairbridge, we are usually the first institutional check for founders driven by high purpose. Our job is to help them remain authentic to the source and to equip them with the tools to succefully navigate inevitable battles with Avarice. The key areas we discuss are:

Mission-to-model integrity: I was once in a room where Stephanie Cummings, the founder of Please Assist Me shared that she only accepted investors aligned with her decision to make all cleaning employees in the firm employees (w2) vs. contractors (1099). Her mission is to empower lower-wage families through predictable work. Her perspective is that the value created by superior service from satisfied employees dwarfs the savings from contracting. Not all investors share this fundamental posture, but the ones at the table must.
Stakeholder alignment: While investor influence on companies is widely documented, customers, employees, vendors, and regulator dynamics are not. Yesterday, I was on a call with my gracious friend Tony Chen and he told me about a portfolio company he has been putting a lot of work into. The company recently fired a top customer in the gambling space because of ethical misalignment. Such a move can cement or irreparably damage relationships depending on who is at the table.
Incentives: We perform a system-wide check on what our founders reward—explicitly and implicitly—especially on their team. An excellent founder in our portfolio doesn’t do retainers; each contract is a bespoke representation of metrics and outputs that align with the firm’s mission. And since venture is a LIFO business, we discuss alignment by assessing how early investors (family and friends rounds) are treated.
Culture: Culture is to incentives what diet is to exercise. Diet is the ongoing discipline that gives substance and definition to exciting bursts of activity. When left unattended, it reverts to a destructive default. We seek to understand how founders translate their mission into shared experiences that others consistently find compelling and engaging.
Stamina: High purpose is often misunderstood, is considered fantastical, and is expensive. It’s easier and more profitable in the short term to build businesses with fewer constraints. Fairbridge founders face strong headwinds and so we seek to understand deeply what will keep them going—How big is the chip on their shoulder? How thick is their skin? Who really is on their side? How do they deal with not being liked? What is the role of exercise in their life? What are their vices? Where do they get replenished?

Alpha belongs to those who can harness Avarice

In 2011, we learned that software was eating the world and that insight drove unprecedented global return. Today, it’s money that’s eating the world. Alpha will come from high purpose founders who can channel Avarice to build truly differentiated businesses that solve consequential societal problems. We aspire for Fairbridge to be a beacon for such founders.

Please sign up, spread widely, and join our mission 💚

On the personal front, 2024 was a year of challenges and growth. When reflecting on why it felt so overwhelming, I realized that personal change was layered over a rapidly changing macro landscape. Politically: we saw a decisive global shift to the right, the definition of an era where money directly and openly dictates outcomes, surprising twists and intricacies in the Middle Eastern geopolitical landscape, and a series of coups and elections in Africa redefining entrenched colonial allegiances. Socially: the effects of inflation theft from expansive monetary policy during the pandemic reached a peak making life very difficult for low-income earners, and a broad pushback on DEI mandates reversed progress made in capital flows to, the creation of, and discovery of talent in underserved market segments. Venture, while a small industry in the grand scheme, played a surprisingly huge role in this changing landscape.

The philosophy
The venture asset class has matured, and investors are looking for new places to find alpha. Traditionally, innovation in the asset class has been two dimensional: inventing new ways to underwrite (financing mechanisms and instruments) and deciding on new innovations to underwrite (new waves of technology). A third dimension answers the question what must be underwritten? Our thesis is that alpha will come from the harnessing of existing technologies and know-how to underwrite existing pressing societal problems. Today’s areas of high risk and reward are problems of alignment, coordination, and efficiency to amplify participation in the global economy. Companies that are funded will tackle excesses in rent seeking, government inefficiency, poor customer service, subpar innovation, and monetary policy that result in inflationary theft: problems stunt the ability of commercial enterprises to create markets that include billions of people who currently lack access to human abundance.

Where we see opportunity
Since Fairbridge’s inception, we have made it clear that our goal is to invest in mission-driven founders who can deploy technology to create markets that eliminate the widest discrepancies in human progress. In our first fund, we tackled themes of access to useful credit, availability of mental health services at scale, and the proliferation of materials (knowledge and capital) to catalyze planetary wellness. We believe these areas will now take center stage in the new economic dispensation. 10 areas we are looking at this year include:

1. Tools to empower businesses serving real needs especially SMEs

2. Better alignment of wages and labor - shorter / instant wage cycles

3. Tools to enhance productivity, economic value and enterprise value of the self including community and employee ownership models

4. Accessible and effective insurance for the vulnerable e.g., lower income and aging

5. Capital-as-a-service

6. Improved behavioral health through human connectedness

7. Care model innovation for customer value at scale

8. Civic education and participation

9. Freedom of speech and combating misinformation

10. Boosting mindshare, knowledge, and capital for sustainable consumption

What other areas would you add to this list?

Join us to make a contribution

At Fairbridge, we believe that generational founders are best positioned to lead groups of aligned stakeholders—public, civic, local communities, and academics/creatives—to drive enduring solutions to our most difficult societal problems. We hosted our first gathering this holiday season. In the new year, we are organizing a few more exciting forums to bring together leaders from different disciplines to catalyze knowledge and collaboration for the biggest challenge and opportunity of our time! Stay tuned and we hope you can join us!

Happy New Year to you all! 💚

In 2020, Fairbridge invested in Boon Supply, a platform offering fundraising services for schools, teams, and community causes. We saw a unique opportunity to back an outstanding founder on a mission to revolutionize product offering and operational efficiency of a stale industry that was selling old magazines and cookies on a pen and paper ordering system. Last year, we shut down the business. What went wrong?

The philosophy

Companies aiming to introduce innovation that disrupts incumbents have three key obligations: (i) to work with underserved consumers in a market of choice to deeply understand their pain, to come up with compelling products that optimize customer value and profitablity (ii) unlock distribution that can scale, and (iii) manage a dynamic risk landscape and liquidity. Companies that don’t excel at all three will not accrue the benefits of their endeavor. However, this does not mean that value hasn’t been created; it might have accrued to society, or to competitors with better execution, or is not properly organized for beneficial use.

Why did we invest?
The opportunity to invest in Boon Supply was very clear to us. We saw a compelling large market, we knew the exact levers to pull for value creation, and we picked the best team.

Compelling thesis:  Advancing sustainable consumer options in a large catalytic market gave us the ability to do good (sustainability and community resilience) and do well (high volume of transactions) at scale.
 Excellent team: Lily Kanter, the CEO was a repeat founder. Lily was co-Founder of Serena and Lily and easily one of the best merchandisers in the world. We had conviction in her ability to disrupt an archaic market.
Favorable market:  School and community fundraising represents significant segments within the broader fundraising industry. Charitable giving in the US totals ~$500B, with ~14% allocated to education and ~14% to human services, which includes community initiatives.

What went wrong?

Framing; buyer vs. the customer: The company was positioned to appeal to Gen Z’s awareness of important matters such as climate change and it’s impact on society. We leaned heavily on this messaging. However, the actual buyers, the parents, turned out to be skeptics, often misconstruing sustainability with liberal political agenda.
Distribution: Our technology was meant to add a digitial dimension to the traditional door-to-door combat distribution model, improving efficiency that would drive volume. The adoption of technology was more complicated and took longer than we anticipated.
The pandemic: The extended shutdown of schools during the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for the business.

What did we learn?

The right Founders matter: In addition to being an excellent operator, Lily demonstrated extreme resilience and cheer in a difficult market and circumstances. She tried all options to steer the ship, including replacing herself as CEO. And at the end she successfully navigated the complex winding down of the business.
Socially critical must also be economically viable: What we knew to be socially critical turned out to be diffifult to monetize. Sustainable merchandise was increasingly harder to source with scale and commanded much lower margins. This compromised our profit sharing model.
Sustainability is difficult: Sustainable consumption is inevitable, but will require patience, persistence, and more capital to build the rails! Lego has done a great job to publicly and honestly share it’s challenges.

The takeaway

Venture capital advances innovation through the creation of new markets or the rethinking of inefficient existing ones. However, only a few companies succeed in accruing the benefits of their innovation to themselves. To improve global return on investment, companies that fail should thoroughly document and broadly dissemminate their lessons for the benefit of future innovators. Unsuccessful ventures should be wound down with order and dignity. This is the true definition of failing forward.  

I wanted to wish you and your loved ones a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of pie 💚!!!

At Fairbridge, our mission is to be the partner of choice for the most brilliant mission-driven Founders focused on bridging society’s widest progress gaps. We believe these founders will take the lead to help overwhelmed public institutions, civic organizations and CSR initiatives to deliver sustainable solutions to the pressing problems we face today. But why focus so much on the Founder?

The philosophy

The world’s investor collective is diligently harnessing capital, technology, and people to maximize the global productivity of capital. We have mastered capital and technology and exploiting their value is nearly commoditized. The Founder remains the variable with real value to unlock. S/he is the goose that lays the golden eggs, and navigating the biology of such a complex process is the key driver for outsized outcomes.

Below, I’ll elaborate my thoughts on these ingredients for value creation.

Capital
Capital is the lubricant and fuel for innovation. Capital flows where it’s loved–––where there’s respect, return, and purpose. We have mostly figured out the constraints of capital.
Liquidity and time: We have developed markets and mechanisms e.g., primary/secondary, collateral, bankruptcy processes etc. that facilitate the liquidation of assets. And, technology now allows the average retail investor to get in and out of positions quickly.
Opportunity cost: Better information, improved skill, and financial engineering have enabled better management of opportunity cost. Innovations like index Funds and ETFs also make diversification easier.

Technology
Rapid technological advancement that started in the 90s laid the groundwork for unprecedented innovation.
Capacity and power: We have unlocked unimaginable technological capacity: (storage, network, processing, battery) and power: (computational, electric & battery, processing, efficiency). Yesterday’s miracles of “1,000 songs in your pocket”, “marrying the internet with movies”, and “making transportation as reliable as running water for everyone…” would have been impossible just a few years before they were realized.
Knowledge: The knowledge for using technology is broadly disseminated and sometimes accessible without knowing how to code (Shopify, etc.). Broader access will connect knowledge with local/proprietary context and imagination, which will drive unprecedented levels of innovation!  

That said, it’s tempting to crown technology as the miracle ingredient of innovation. A better way is to view it as an amplifier of intent; human intent.

People (Founders)
The Founder is the magic ingredient because of powerful attributes that are neither replicable nor generalizable.
Capability:  A Founder’s operating expertise, her lived experience, personality, and how those shape her unique perspective can be channeled through purpose to build remarkable businesses.
Moral authority: A Founder can drive the direction of a business from a deeper place that a hired gun cannot. Gillian Tee the Founder of Homage uncovered that her relentless drive for building a caregiving business was driven by the memory of her own caregiver who died of cancer when Gillian was little. Such a source of inspiration, maybe a calling, can lead to a Founder commissioning unconventional markets or making counterintuitive decisions that unlock extraordinary value.
Stewardship: A Founders’ mission is the delivery of her vision to customers with consistency. In the process, she can build a successful business and generate significant personal wealth. How she stewards these responsibilities e.g., with succession planning, charitable donations, and time, is consequential to incremental global return.

Where to find the goose

A growing proportion of exceptional Founders are driven by a deep sense of stewardship for important societal problems. . This growing supply of talent (BCorp launches are a proxy) and the widening of access gaps in human development is why we are betting on this space. We’ve been finding Founders who are:
Exiting the fancy and fast “jobs”: Millennials working for tech that’s now become big tech. These Founders are revisiting their lives and seeking higher purpose as they contemplate the world they want their kids to inherit.
Immigrants and first generation: Immigrant, first-generation, or Founders currently abroad targeting US markets for problems for which they have experience and unique perspective for in their countries of origin.
Returning diaspora: Diasporans who migrated to the US with a goal to learn and return to build their countries, got stuck here for a while, and now have gathered enough experience, personal wealth, and courage to go follow through. 

Follow the goose…

At Fairbridge, we have invested in a few of these Generational Founders. They are brilliant, they care, and they are focused on building things that matter. We are looking for more of them and we are spreading the word about them to all investors!

Asking for help! 

I’d love to rally folks behind Fairbridge’s work on Bridging Progress Gaps^TM and I am asking for your support.
Sharing: Could you please help us spread the message by sharing this publication with your friends and on your your social channels!!! I also welcome your thoughts directly on this topic.
Collaboration: I am looking for guest authors to write or co-author articles with so we can advance thought leadership on this topic.

Thank you!

A couple of months ago I wrote about the Generational Founder, the Founder archetype best positioned to build businesses that address today’s stubborn societal problems. This Founder possesses deep empathy for the problem, and has superior commercial and “political” capability. Today, I will discuss components that this Founder’s business must be proficient at.

The philosophy

There are trillions of dollars in the hands of different stakeholders seeking solutions to the same big societal problems, but we have a coordination problem. Sean Davis’s book, Solving the Giving pledge Bottleneck is a great primer on this topic. This problem can be anecdotally explained by a foundation seeking to advance causes in sustainability through grants, but relying on investment returns from fossil fuels. Private enterprise’s creativity and incentive structure position it for a leadership role in coordinating venture design, stakeholder management, and mutual, sustainable value creation. Companies that can navigate this terrain become generational enterprises.

The Generational Enterprise

The Generational Enterprise’s primary focus is to deliver sustainable, superior customer value with consistency, which then drives return for for its shareholders. This organization must be proficient in the capabilities below to deliver superior ROI.

Economic design

Technology – Means leveraging rapid technological development to reimagine or invent economic models that address large, underserved markets and open new markets for capital seeking market return. For example, blockchain technologies allow for building rails for quick and cheap clearing and movement of capital across borders. AI on the other hand is dramatically reducing input costs unlocking higher gross margins.
Knowledge – Means harnessing entrepreneurship knowledge that is now broadly accessible. This allows for solving problems quicker (many people are attempting) and cheaper (reduced cost of mistakes). I particularly like Rob Liu’s Anthena University. Rob is on a mission to help a million Founders start their first business. Knowledge also makes it easy to identify challenging areas where capital can be deployed with the highest ROI.
Global access to resources – This used to apply mostly to natural resources, but with remote work this means access to the best human capital. The Generational Enterprise can find best people anywhere, facilitate efficient coordination, and use this positioning to target global markets early.

Stakeholder design

Capitalization tables – Means the ability to coordinate shareholders with different objectives on a single capital table. This requires innovative thinking e.g., flexible rules for providing liquidity or thoughtful design for performance-based social KPIs.  
Non-dilutive capital – Public institutions and private foundations increasingly rely on commercial enterprise for program delivery. For companies, this means mastering the bidding process e.g., grant writing. It also means ability to navigate opportunity cost of constraining mandates e.g., hiring quotas. Organizations like Joel’s  Climate Finance Solutions stand out in their ability to help companies navigate this landscape.
Table setting – Early in my career I underestimated the value of non-market stakeholders in building scalable ventures. I believed that if social outcomes were embedded in a company’s business model, all stakeholders would eventually fall into line. Like me, most Founders are not trained in this skillset. James Mason, and Gene Flood at Flood Mason Holdings are excellent at table setting and they helped me to deeply understand that every big endeavor must be collaborative.

Design for sustainability

Customer value – Sustainable, superior customer value is the ultimate measure for success for the Generational Enterprise. This means focusing on solutions that boost access, improve quality, and are affordable in price and capital efficiency.
Unit economics, return – Compelling unit economics are the single most important indicator for product-market fit. Unit economics allow for generational companies to pay their employees and to continuously develop great products without the disruption of visiting capital markets repeatedly. Compelling unit economics establish a firm foundation for superior return.
Public good(s) – Changing social attitudes from consumers and regulators are forcing companies to embed stewardship of public goods into their business models. The purview of public goods is expanding and now includes morality and authenticity. It’s no longer sufficient to just pay your taxes and avoid polluting the ocean. Issues like social justice, free speech, matter so much more!

Generational Enterprise for generational problems

Startups get rewarded for solving problems, and those solving the most difficult problems receive the biggest reward. The biggest problem of our time are the elimination of the most critical progress gaps to deliver human development to billions who currently lack access. Businesses that will successfully solve these problems are complex and multidisciplinary. They can only be run by the Generational Founder.

The last 5-7 years in venture have been transformative. Democratization of the industry has resulted in many first-time founders—Investors and Founders—on both sides of the marketplace. In the long term this will benefit the venture ecosystem tremendously by boosting innovation and global return on capital. However, the transitory pain resulting from the chaos of new entrants in a market can be difficult to navigate.

In this letter, I want to help Founders understand some of the challenging realities of their emerging manager counterparts with the hope to help establish stronger alignment and collaboration between the two groups. 

The philosophy

Most investors backing companies in new market segments or in newer forms of investment mandates are also recent Founders of their ventures. They face similar risks, experience the same learning curve, and are navigating the same brutal emotional curve as the Founders they are backing. To Founders, embracing this reality can help to establish and deepen valuable bonds with their investors. Strong ecosystems of tomorrow will depend on new entrants working together intimately to solidify alliances that challenge entrenched incumbents with effectiveness.

The main challenges new managers face fall into three main buckets:

Cash resources

Capital budgeting: Many new funds start deploying capital after the first close. When an investor is unable to raise the full fund, s/he must make capital budgeting adjustments that limit the ability to invest in future rounds of existing portfolio companies even where strong interest was previously communicated.
Operating budget: Portfolio companies with improved prospects can call on investors for additional capital. Funds don’t have this option. Their revenue is fixed—management fees—until they have exits or a new fund. This limits the ability to invest to keep up with scale.
Syndicates: Many emerging fund managers are still building their capacity to mobilize large investment syndicates around their portfolio companies. And when they ask, “who else is investing.”—they are not engaging in herd mentality, but attempting to assess syndication risk.

Knowledge and systems

Operating systems: At Fairbridge, we saw ~500 opportunities in our first year. And with a modest setup of Office tools and brute force we stayed on top of things. Today, our opportunity set is 8x. It’s physically impossible to handle this level of scale manually and important things fell through the cracks. Fortunately, we are now investing in a Practice Management System.
Fund operations: While they are adept at investing, many emerging managers don’t have experience in business operations. Learning operations is crucial, but it directs mindshare and time away from serving portfolio companies.
Theses: An investor’s view of the world can change as they navigate their business’ product-market-fit. This can result in changes in investment focus that impact the existing portfolio.

Human nature

It’s hard to say no: It’s difficult to turn down a founder. Investors can drag decisions because of bias and communication shortcomings on anticipated capital closes or investment committee processes.
The burden of “other” mandates: Investors with restrictive mandates might get caught up navigating the gray areas of balancing integrity among conflicting variables.
Founder emotions: Startups are incredibly difficult. They are emotional and personal. Personal challenges, moods, and pressures can impact investment processes for emerging managers.

Advocating for mutual conviction

Shared risk: Emerging managers face the same startup risks as Founders—tight budgets, reneged LP commitments, bad hires, burnout, doubt, and product-market-fit. Founders capable of engaging with their investor’s unique reality can derive tremendous benefit. For example, one of our CEOs introduced us to an LP, which unlocked investment in the company’s new financing after a brief delay.

A mutual bet: There’s a unique opportunity for new entrants in the venture ecosystem to boost return and Founders play a pivotal role. Founders should remember that their potential investor is also startup Founder, navigating similarly difficult terrain. Founders then need to perform due diligence on their potential investors to answer the question: “Is this a Founder I want to invest in. Is this someone I can trust with my vision, someone I can grow together with?” Mutual conviction is at center of establishing trust and strategic alignment required to build enduring ventures and these are especially critical when the chips are down.