Here’s to the million dollar ARR 10min old startups
Here's YC's official advice about being truthful and precise about what is pilot, bookings, revenue and recurring revenue.
Founders, particularly first time founders, need to sear this into their brains. Don't mistake one tier for another. Be precise, and always be truthful.
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TheRugPush retweeted
Dave is right - USVC yet another grift in the world of retail-accessible VC. I went through the 56-page prospectus and its even worse than the tweet suggests:
1. Fee stack: 3.61% gross annual expense ratio, capped net at 2.50%. Underlying SPVs/VC funds charge another 1–2.5% mgmt + 20–30% carry on top. You're paying 3+ layers of fees before any return hits your account.
2. The prospectus states twice, verbatim: "The Investment Adviser has no previous experience managing a closed-end, registered investment company." The adviser was formed Dec 2023 and rebranded from "Strawberry Tree Management" to "AngelList Asset Management" last November.
3. Portfolio manager Ankur Nagpal is compensated on AUM growth, not performance. Straight from the prospectus: his Carry acquisition earnout "includes contingent payments tied to USVC's growth in assets under management." Textbook non-traded REIT incentive structure.
4. AngelList gets paid three times on the same dollar:
• 1% advisory fee to AngelList Asset Management
• Up to 5% of profits to Platform Advisor LLC (AngelList affiliate)
• Fund admin fees to Belltower Fund Group (AngelList affiliate)
5. NAV is sponsor-marked - the adviser is its own "valuation designee." Prospectus disclaimer: "Fair value prices are necessarily subjective in nature…no assurance that such a price will be at or close to the price at which the security is next quoted or next trades."
6. "5% quarterly redemptions" is marketing. Reality: Board can cancel any offer, can offer less than 5%, can repurchase at a discount to NAV, and oversubscribed offers prorate. Straight from the doc: "Shareholders should not rely on being able to tender the full amount—or any—of their Shares."
7. Naval frames it as "VC for everyone." The prospectus describes a non-traded CEF with sponsor-marked NAV, AUM-linked manager comp, three layers of affiliate fees, and gated discretionary liquidity.
Retail doesn't need access to private markets this badly.
Pretty much the worst possible structure for a legally issued security in the U.S. Market: the non-traded Closed End Fund. Congratulations, you found the grift pile sitting right next to non-traded REITs and BDCs. Enjoy the 3% sales load!
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Pros
- exposure to the hottest companies (xAI, Antrophic, openAI
- Individual investors. $500 minimum.
- 1% management fee. No carry.
Cons
- the gross expense ratio would be about 3.6%
Announcing: USVC
AngelList exists to power the innovation economy.
To date, we have powered $125 billion in assets, 25,000+ funds, and 13,000+ startups.
Today, we’re opening it for retail access.
@usvc_ is a regulated fund that holds stakes in promising private companies.
There are no accreditation requirements and anyone can get started with as little as $500.
Early portfolio includes xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Sierra, Vercel, Crusoe, and Legora.
Own a stake in the companies defining the future.
Learn more: usvc.com/
Community note
The post may imply more direct access than the filings support. Per the fund’s own filings, liquidity is board-controlled, fees include up to 3% sales load + 1.00% management fee + acquired fund fees, and exposure may be via SPVs/VC funds, not direct stakes.
usvc.com/documents/USVC…
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New Claude cowork use case unlocked:
Researching aesthetics clinics for a particular treatment
Location, price, quality, promotions
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“Make America great again”
I am a Web3 Ambassador at World Liberty Financial.
There are 12 of us on the team page. 4 are named Trump. 3 are named Witkoff. The page calls us "the passionate minds shaping the future of finance."
600,000 wallets bought our memecoin. They lost $3.87 billion. The family collected $350 million in trading fees. It launched 3 days before the inauguration. 80% of the supply went to CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC. I did not choose the names. I designed the allocation, the vesting, the timing, and the distance between the product and the President.
The distance is my best work.
I am the reason these events are unrelated.
World Liberty Financial sends 75 cents of every dollar to DT Marks DEFI LLC. That is the family entity. Zero capital contributed. Zero liability assumed. I wrote this into the Gold Paper. Page 14. The lawyers bound it in white leather. The binding cost more than the due diligence.
Justin Sun invested $75 million. He was facing SEC fraud charges. The SEC dropped the case. He is now our advisor. These events are unrelated.
Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to federal money laundering violations. He received a presidential pardon. The SEC dropped its lawsuit against his exchange the same week we listed our stablecoin. Then the exchange settled a $2 billion deal entirely in that stablecoin. These events are unrelated.
Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed of BitMEX pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations. All 3 received presidential pardons. Then the company itself was pardoned. $100 million in fines. Gone. An American first. These events are unrelated.
Sheikh Tahnoun of Abu Dhabi paid $500 million for a 49% stake that was never publicly disclosed. Then the administration approved semiconductor exports to his companies over national security objections. These events are unrelated.
Everything is unrelated. I track the unrelatedness on a dashboard I built. The dashboard has 7 columns now. I am proud of the dashboard.
On May 22nd, 220 people paid a combined $148 million to eat dinner with the America First president. Over half were foreign nationals. Justin Sun paid $18.5 million for the first seat. He visited the Executive Office Building the day before. I designed the seating chart. I put it on the Investor Confidence page. That page is doing well.
The team page lists 3 Witkoffs. All 3 are Co-Founders.
Steven Witkoff is the President's Middle East envoy. He testified as a character witness at the President's fraud trial.
His son Zach runs the crypto operation. His son Alex is also a Co-Founder. I have not been told what Alex co-founded.
The father runs the diplomacy. The sons run the platform. The family runs both. That is organizational efficiency.
Barron is 19. His title is Web3 Ambassador. The same as mine. Donald Jr. called the conflicts of interest "complete nonsense." Eric launched a Bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin. America First. The mining partner is Hut 8. Hut 8 was founded in Canada. America First means the name.
On March 6th, the President signed Executive Order 14233 creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The order directs the government to hold Bitcoin. The President's family holds billions in Bitcoin. The executive order appreciates the President's assets by presidential decree. I did not write the executive order. I made sure it looked unrelated to the portfolio.
Trump Media put $2 billion of Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The ticker symbol is DJT. His initials. The press secretary said it is absurd to insinuate the President profits off the presidency. Forbes calculated his crypto holdings exceed the combined value of Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower. I would call that absurd too. That is my job.
600,000 wallets bought in. 1 of them asked why she could not withdraw her funds. I told her the protocol was experiencing dynamic market conditions. She asked what that meant. I sent her the Gold Paper. She said she had read the Gold Paper. I muted her channel. Dynamic means the conditions change. The condition that changed was her access.
A congressman called us the world's most corrupt crypto startup operation. We put it on a coffee mug. Ironic merchandise. $45. The revenue split on the mug is also 75/25.
My own tokens vest on a different schedule. I wrote that schedule. That is not in the Gold Paper.
The memecoin funds the family. The family funds the platform. The platform funds the stablecoin. The stablecoin funds the deals. The deals require the pardons. The pardons free the partners. The partners fund the platform. The President signs the executive orders. The executive orders inflate the assets. The assets fund the family.
I am the reason these events are unrelated.
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Binance slowly executing on its strategy
Bringing tradfi assets to its crypto native users
Stocks, commodities, and now ‘private equity’
Their response to tradfi banks and asset managers expanding into crypto
Binance doing the same but in the opposite direction
Pre-IPO assets are now easier to discover in #BinanceWallet.
The first batch of 5 assets is now available under [Markets] in the [Wallet] view on the Binance App, making it easier to explore related on-chain Pre-IPO assets.
👉 Explore now: app.binance.com/uni-qr/web3-…
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Someone threw a Molotov at his house
I wrote this early this morning and I wasn't sure if I would actually publish it, but here it is:
blog.samaltman.com/2279512
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How is this guy real
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!
(TS: 07 Apr 08:06 ET)
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Ethena has come to realise that yield trumps all in crypto
Not risk adjusted yields - the average degen doesn’t take that into account
all they care about is the raw APY value from a product they see as “legit”
These “diversifications” should help to attract more capital
Since 10/10 Ethena was poorly positioned for what has been a material regime change.
In the last few months we have been building out the infrastructure to securely access alternate sources of safe and scalable collateral to better position the business for these periods of downturn.
This is an important piece of work which should have been done a long while ago, but now positions USDe backing to experience less rate volatility during periods of suppressed crypto native interest rates.
Going forward, once approved by the independent risk committee, USDe will have access to:
-Basis on non crypto assets including commodities and equities
-Institutional triparty collateralized lending via @coinbase @krakenfx @Anchorage and others
-Prime lending across CeFi and @HyperliquidX
-Liquid high quality non-tbill RWA exposures
Each of the above represent multi-billion capacity opportunities with that will now sit alongside the existing USDe collateral base to improve the product resilience through the cycle.
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Curators and risk managers are increasingly displaying their incompetence in DeFi
Quite recently MEV Capital and Exlir’s deUSD
Now these “curators” on Morpho with USR
1/ Millions in bad debt, at the time of writing, were created across Gauntlet's Morpho vaults from the Resolv USR exploit.
Almost all of it was supplied ** after ** the exploit.
So why would curators supply millions in USDC to a broken market?
Let’s dive in.
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Perplexity's one-year free customer acquisition campaign worked.
just subscribed for a paid year of my Pro membership.
gg
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AI on Notion is great. I can finally just dump all my messy notes and ask it to create a nicely formatted new page for me in the appropriate category and section
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>country invests in Antrophic through their SWF GIC
>buys millions of seats for their citizens
There is no second best
Singaporeans to receive free premium AI subscriptions from second half of 2026 bit.ly/3OIa6HX
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