Insights From Our Human Capital Conference

On Monday, Slow Ventures teamed up with Humanism to host a conference dedicated to individual-first investing. Alongside founders, creators, and investors, we explored key elements and considerations when raising capital at the person vs. company level. While investing in people has been thematically correct for a long time, its actualization has hinged on the right cultural moment (which we are in today). Over the past few years, we have witnessed individuals catapult to the forefront of culture, building unprecedented, cult-like communities and, in some cases, achieving enterprise-level scale.

The conversation was optimistic yet rational, and we hope to continue it as the space evolves. We are excited to share some of the discussion points with our broader community:

Incentive Alignment

• Flexibility: Too often, founders receive corrective feedback on a bad idea too late and in the form of capital pullback by big, late-stage investors. When funding supports a person instead of a specific idea, investors can offer continuous feedback and the freedom to pivot, preventing wasted time and effort on poorly-performing or low ROI projects

• Equity compensation: For founders or creators building real, deep equity value, the HoldCo structure enables long-term incentive alignment for key members. For creators in particular, HoldCo equity allows them to move away from a commission model, which is designed for one-off transactions

• Counterparty relationship: Counterparty sophistication is imperative when backing individuals. Investors should only work with founders and creators who are savvy counterparties – from an age, legal, and commercial perspective

What Capital Buys

• Problem-focused innovation: Traditional venture funding is great once founders have a clear product vision, but it does not serve those who simply have conviction in a fundamental problem set. HoldCo-level investment uniquely supports this ideation / R&D phase

• Experimentation: For creators, it’s important to pursue consistent growth of the core “product,” but the experimental pursuits necessary for creative breakthroughs require capital-enabled time and safety

• War chest: While niches offer some protection against competition, deep verticalization is not a failsafe. Having a war chest that enables faster and more aggressive progress is a tremendous competitive advantage

A New Asset Class

• Hiding in plain sight: Some of the best investment opportunities today are overlooked because they are not packaged for Silicon Valley. For example, creators are the most powerful growth marketing engines, but they don’t fit a traditional investment model

• Bigger checks, earlier: Investing directly in founders and creators is an excellent strategy for putting growth-sized dollars into early-stage ventures

• Liquidity: There is still no obvious ‘basket’ exit for multi-hyphenate creator investments. However, liquidity might come from the sale of bundled creator properties or a singular commerce business (where profit is distributed to the HoldCo) – or potentially even through crypto solutions, such as tokenization

Thank you to everyone who joined us this week – we are already looking forward to the next one! If you are interested in attending next year’s event, please fill out this typeform.