Modern venture capital is failing its most important stakeholder: the limited partner. What began as an asset class defined by sharp underwriting and aligned incentives has drifted into an economy of social proof masquerading as diligence and fund cycles extended not for the benefit of LPs, but for the economics of the managers themselves. Decision-making in Silicon Valley is now based only on atmospheric intuition: how loudly the hype machine hums.
Markups are surging to historic highs while cash distributions have collapsed to decade lows. LPs are told to be patient and to appreciate "MOIC" - (our least favorite word at Volantis). They are told cycles are lengthening, yet no one ever asks whose incentives are served by this dramatic elongation of liquidity timelines. The answer is incredibly simple: incumbent funds benefit enormously from charging 2% on NAV of capital that sits illiquid for 15 years. Why disrupt the status quo when the fee stream compounds beautifully, regardless of whether the underlying companies ever do?
Volantis exists to break this equilibrium.
Our thesis is radical only in its simplicity: the world doesn't need another seed fund. The marginal seed check today is a $50M post-money pre-anything "AI-native" experiment in founders who are statistically unlikely to build businesses that return outsized cash. In short, when enough money is chasing the same thing - alpha gets competed away. The market is saturated with funds that chase early-stage optionality, pay enormous premiums for a founder story about a chip-on-shoulder received from having a mean parent, and then wait a decade hoping to be bailed out by the next markup.
The real alpha in today's private markets sits where almost no one is looking: in owning the absolutely best private companies without paying the round premium when those companies are already significantly de-risked and have visible paths to liquidity. These are mispriced liquidity trades in the most generational companies of our time. There is an entire market of shareholders who need liquidity because the venture cycle abandoned them. And there is an entire ecosystem of institutional allocators who want exposure without the decade-long lockup currently imposed by venture funds.
We believe the future of venture returns will belong not to those who chase the earliest possible exposure, but to those who operate in the liquidity-efficient zone between private and public markets.
We align with LPs by refusing to participate in a system built to delay their returns.
The old venture playbook rewards patience.
The new one rewards precision.
Volantis is built for the new one.