Lolita Taub on Launching Her ‘Community-Driven’ Fund on AngelList

Taub spoke to AngelList about her investment thesis, her belief in community-driven funds and startups, and her ambitions for Ganas Ventures.

Matthew Speiser: How do you define “community” as it relates to the world of startups and venture?

Lolita Taub: You know a startup or fund is community-driven when its customers/LPs:

• Identify as members,
• Create value for other customers/LPs, and
• Start the marketing and sales flywheel.
  

Examples of community-driven companies include some of the most successful startups in recent history: Airbnb, Reddit, MongoDB, Atlassian, Quora, Glossier, and Patreon. The output of community-driven companies for LPs is the potential for outsized returns and generational wealth.

MS: Why is now the right time for a community-driven fund?

LT: The pandemic pushed us to seek a new path forward as humans and businesses. People are lonely and want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Community-driven companies provide meaning to employees and customers, while simultaneously enabling a “go-to-community” approach which can lower customer acquisition costs (because of the word of mouth), create higher lifetime value (because of the connection), attract mission-aligned talent (because the community wants to see the company succeed), and is hard for competitors to replicate.

For all these reasons, I believe there’s an enormous opportunity to create outsized returns investing in community-driven companies now.

MS: How will community manifest itself in the day-to-day operations of Ganas Ventures?

LT: The Ganas Ventures' LP community will be involved in everything from fund operations and strategy to due diligence and portfolio support via our operator-investor program—which all new LPs will be invited to join.

We’ll gather LPs’ skill sets, preferences, and time availability. As needs emerge, I’ll reach out to them in a low-lift, high-impact manner. What’s important about this model is that it treats our LPs not as a check, but as human value-adds to the fund.

LPs will join Ganas Ventures for our sense of community as well as the prospect of great returns.

MS: Why did you want Ganas Ventures to be a 506(c) fund?

LT: The status quo is to be a 506(b) fund. But if you’re an emerging manager from an underrepresented community like I am, not being able to market your fund makes zero sense.

By being a 506(c) fund on AngelList, we can reach more women, people of color, LGBTQ+, and other underestimated / underrepresented communities and bring them into the Ganas Ventures community.

If more funds are to be led by people like me, we need to be more open minded about how things are done in venture capital. We must, as a community, accept that some of us need to do things in a non-status-quo way to launch, raise, and be successful as emerging fund managers. Ganas Ventures is a step in that direction.

MS: Why did you decide to partner with AngelList on this fund?

LT: I spent a couple months performing due diligence around fund formation and back office management for Ganas Ventures. I ended up choosing AngelList for several reasons:

• Reduced complexity with fund formation and management because I manage one vendor relationship versus multiple (which means less work for a solo GP like me).
• Simpler/fixed costs for the fund (which means more capital to deploy).
• AngelList handles proof of accreditation (which means I have one less vendor to hire).
• Easy LP onboarding / management experience (which means faster onboarding and potentially higher conversion).
  

MS: Do you see the community-driven fund model becoming more popular in the future?

LT: In the future, I think community-driven fund models will become the norm as communities prove to enable the success of talented emerging fund managers. I’m grateful that Ganas gets to be an early leader in this new evolution of VC, alongside our business partners, founders, funders, and friends.

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