Personal Capital

Idea: Fund People, Not Projects

• Personal Capital > Venture Capital

Problem: Brilliant people are stuck in bad jobs.

• They’d quit if they had $100K+ to cover their next 1-2 years.
  • Example: I meet brilliant engineers who work at Fortune 500 companies and have awesome startup ideas, but they’re scared to launch them because their employment contracts say all IP they create is owned by their companies.

Solution: Fund high-potential inventors and creators directly and share in all their success.

• Think: 360 Deals for Creators.
  • Funding is attached to the person, not the project.
  • Investors earn a percentage of future equity and/or revenue streams.

Investors: Back creators’ whole portfolios.

• Invest directly in creators and let them build whatever they want.
  • This is a Founder Accelerator for everything.

Creators: Get funded pre-idea and be free to do your best work.

• Build your own portfolio of products, services, and/or media.
  • Don’t go all-in on one startup. Diversify your revenue streams.

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The 4 Types of Personal Capital:

People need different types of funding and support to get to the next level.

• Personal Capital can cover all these bases:
  • Anyone can change their career using personal capital like ISAs.
  • We can unlock the highest potential of promising people by funding them directly.

I’m most excited about launching and investing in the most high-risk ideas.

• Utopic Studio is my high-risk incubator.
  • My mission is to solve the World’s Biggest Problems.
    • I want to launch and/or invest in all 100 solutions on this list in my lifetime.
• Utopic Ventures will be for my high-risk investments.
  • I want to invest in and inspire a new generation of indie startup studios.
    • Creators should run their own studios!

Chart:

Examples:

1. High-Risk Investing = Idea Capital

• Incumbents:
  • Venture Capital: Y Combinator
  • EIR Programs: Sequoia (Surge, Arc), A16z (START)
• Challengers:
  • Challenge Grants: Fast Grants
  • Idea Capital: Apollo, SPC

2. High-Risk Incubating = Founder Accelerator

• Incumbents:
  • Startup Studios: Idealab, Atomic, Science
  • VC Incubators: Sutter Hill Ventures (Mike Speiser), Flagship Pioneering (Noubar Afeyan)
• Challengers:
  • Founder Accelerator: TxO (Nait Jones), Utopic Studio

3. Low-Risk Investing = ISAs

• Incumbents: Student Loans
• Challengers: ISAs
  • Financing: Avenify
  • Marketplaces: Edly
  • Platforms: Vemo, EdAid, Leif, Meratas

4. Low-Risk Incubating = Full-Stack Schools

• Incumbents: Colleges
• Challengers: Full-Stack Schools
  • CS/Data: Bloom Tech

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Personal Capital is on my list of solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems.

• This idea is a work-in-progress. If you’d like to riff on it, hit me up @neilthanedar on Twitter!