Should a successful venture investor institutionalize their firm into a lasting partnership, or manage wealth privately through a family office?

Cem Sertoglu · Nov 20, 2024

After a huge win, a successful investor should institutionalize the firm rather than retreat to a family office

His team wants to work for a firm they will one day inherit, he wants it to outlast him, and the most inspirational venture firms are the ones that achieved institutionalization — which doesn't happen with a family office

Scope: acknowledges it is a very personal decision

47:00 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu

Hussein Kanji · Jan 20, 2025

The test of a durable venture firm rather than a boutique or a project is whether the founder can hand the reins to someone else, which he intends to do within a decade

A firm that is just a shell over one person isn't durable

73:37 20VC: Why Large Seed Rounds Increase the Chances of Success | When to Sell in Venture | Why Multi-Stage Firms Do Not Do The Work | Is Europe Totally F****** and Why AI Means London Can Compete with the US with Hussein Kanji

Harry Stebbings · Nov 20, 2024

It is much harder to find mission and love for the work inside a family office than inside an institutional firm

47:32 Family offices lack the mission and love of work that institutional firms provide

Chamath Palihapitiya · Jul 13, 2020

Running a traditional venture capital firm is fundamentally an asset-gathering business that requires falling in love with sales and travel, and is incompatible with building a mission-driven conglomerate

Running the asset-gathering machine he had built would have required giving up the rest of his life to constant selling, traveling and storytelling; he loved only the storytelling, and his goal of a Berkshire/Koch/Red Cross hybrid was impossible through the traditional VC lens

13:09 Traditional vc asset gathering model is incompatible with building a mission driven conglomerate