Venture funds
The most passive route into startups, and the least forgiving of impatience. You hand a professional manager a commitment, they build a portfolio over years, and you find out how it went sometime in the next decade.
What a venture fund is
A venture capital fund is a pool of money raised from outside investors and invested by a professional team into a portfolio of startups. Two roles define it: the LPs (limited partners) provide the capital, and the GPs (general partners) make every investment decision and run the firm.
If you invest in a fund, you are an LP. That word "limited" is precise and worth taking literally: your liability is limited to what you committed, and so is your influence. You do not pick the companies, you cannot veto a deal you dislike, and you cannot ask for your money back because circumstances changed. You are buying a team’s judgement for a decade.
This is the structural opposite of a syndicate. In a syndicate you approve every deal one at a time and can stop whenever you like. In a fund you approve the manager once, at the beginning, and then live with every decision they make afterwards.
The mechanics nobody explains up front
You commit, you don’t transfer
Signing for US$200,000 does not mean wiring US$200,000. You make a commitment, and the money stays with you until it is called.
Capital calls arrive on their schedule
The GPs draw down your commitment in tranches — a capital call — as they invest, typically over 3–5 years and usually with only a couple of weeks’ notice. That money must be liquid and waiting.
Defaulting is severe
Miss a capital call and the penalties in the fund documents are harsh, up to forfeiting a large part of your existing interest. Never commit an amount you might not be able to fund on demand.
The investment period, then the harvest
Roughly the first half of the fund’s life is spent making new investments and reserving for follow-ons; the rest is spent supporting companies and waiting for exits.
Ten years, plus extensions
A typical fund has a ~10-year life with options to extend, commonly by two more years. Twelve years from first close to final distribution is normal, not a failure.
Distributions come back irregularly
Not as dividends — as lumps, whenever a portfolio company exits. Possibly nothing for six years and then most of your return in one quarter.
"2 and 20", and what it really costs
The classic structure is a 2% annual management fee on committed capital plus 20% carried interest on profits, often above a hurdle rate (a preferred return to LPs, commonly ~8%) with a catch-up for the GPs afterwards.
The management fee is the part that surprises people, because it is charged on your commitment whether or not the money has been called, and it is charged for years. A 2% fee over a 10-year life consumes roughly 20% of committed capital — meaning a meaningful share of your money pays for the firm to exist rather than buying equity in startups. The fund has to significantly outperform before you are even level.
The J-curve follows directly from this. In the early years, fees come out and investments are still carried at cost, so your reported value goes *down*. Paper returns typically look bad for the first three to four years of a perfectly healthy fund. Investors who panic at year two did not understand what they bought.
What to check before committing as an LP
Track record across cycles
DPI (cash actually returned) matters more than TVPI (paper marks). Anyone can show high marks in a bull market; ask what they have distributed, and what happened to the funds raised at the top.
Is the team the same team?
The returns in the deck may belong to partners who have since left. Key-person clauses exist for a reason — read them.
GP commitment
How much of their own money are the GPs putting in? A meaningful personal stake (commonly 1–2%+ of the fund) aligns them with returns rather than fee income.
Fund size vs. strategy
A US$500M fund cannot generate venture returns from US$500k seed checks — the math doesn’t work. Fund size should match the stage they claim to invest in.
All the fees, not just the headline
Management fee basis (committed or invested capital?), fee step-downs after the investment period, hurdle, catch-up, and fund expenses charged to LPs.
Can you actually fund the calls?
For a decade, on two weeks’ notice, through whatever your own life does in the meantime. This kills more LPs than bad picks do.
Venture funds in Latin America
The regional fund landscape matured alongside the startups. Kaszek and monashees are the best-known independent LATAM managers, joined by Latitud’s fund, ALLVP, DILA Capital, Canary, Maya Capital and dozens more — alongside global funds like SoftBank, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, QED and Tiger, whose participation defined the 2021 boom and whose retreat defined what came after.
Access is the honest obstacle. Most of these funds are institutionally backed and closed to individuals; minimums for those that do accept individual LPs typically start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some development-finance institutions (IDB Lab, CAF) and local fund-of-funds structures widen the door slightly, and regional feeder vehicles occasionally aggregate smaller commitments — but for most individuals, funds are the route you read about rather than the route you take.
Which is precisely why the other three routes on this site exist. If a fund is out of reach, syndicates offer professional-adjacent access at a fraction of the minimum, and regulated crowdfunding starts at the price of a dinner.
Not ready for six-figure commitments?
Compare the four routes →