In today’s (short) edition:

• The coolest companies we’re tracking in the alternative investments space

FINE WINE AND WHISKEY

Vinovest

Vinovest makes wine and whiskey investments accessible to individuals. They handle the assets physically, from storage to insurance to authentication, in centralized bonded warehouses to make investing in fine alcohols feasible for individuals.

We like Vinovest because of their enthusiast-first approach. While they abstract away the challenges of acquiring and holding wine and whiskey, they do bridge the physical gap between investor and asset. Investors fully own their wine and whiskey assets, and can even request delivery to experience the value of their investment.

Quick Facts

• Series A with $12.5 million raised in total

• Founded and run by Anthony Zhang

• Investors include Embedding VC, Tribe Capital, 10X Capital, Rainfall Ventures, and Highfield Capital, among others

STARTUP SYNDICATES

Sydecar

Sydecar is a modern AngelList alternative allowing investors to easily run syndicates. What is a syndicate, you might ask? Simply put, it’s a formalized group of angel investors funding a company together.

The main benefits of a syndicate are the individualized deal-flow and the low capital requirements for each deal. Many syndicates are open for accredited investors to join, though deal-flow is hard to come by—the hottest startup deals will not provide allocations to small, unknown syndicates. Name brand carries weight.

As the startup world gains media traction, so does the demand for individual access to startup deals. Tools like Sydecar are the shovels for that trend.

That said, a lot goes into running a syndicate. You have to curate your deal-flow, accept investors and vet their accreditation status, host investment memos/pitch decks/data rooms, send investment updates, wire money to target companies, track management fees and carry, record an internal cap table to bookkeep individuals’ holdings… the list goes on.

Sydecar has better software, tools, communication, support, and monitoring than AngelList. They do charge a premium for these benefits.

This company is an important one to track as many small funds and syndicate leads look for alternatives to antiquated fund-management software.

Quick Facts

• Co-Founded by David Meister and Nik Talreja in 2021, both of whom came from 18.ventures

• Approximately 56 employees

• Total of $16.2 million raised with an estimated $60 million post-money valuation

• Notable investors include Pipeline Capital, Hustle Fund, Snow Leopard Ventures, House of Ventures, and a number of angels

PHYSICAL COLLECTIBLES

Rally

Rally has epitomized physical-asset alternative investing. Their platform allows individuals to invest nominally low dollar amounts into collectible blue-chip items, such as cars, cards, and sports paraphernalia.

Check out this gorgeous Porsche 356 Speedster from 1955 with a $425,000 market cap and $212.50 share price at offering.

Rally sources noteworthy collectible items, equitizes and fractionalizes them, conducts an initial offering, and then allows holders to transact their shares after 90 days.

Because their shares are fully regulated, holders can even transact off-platform with registered broker-dealers. True ownership—something we love to see in the alt investments space!

Quick Facts

• Founded in 2016 by Christopher Bruno, an NYU Stern graduate, former VC, and serial founder (1 exit, 1 still growing at a $1.7 billion valuation)

• $87.5 million raised to-date with an estimated $167 million post-money valuation

• Roughly 50 employees

• Huge list of investors; notable standouts are the Major League Baseball, Porsche Ventures, Alexis Ohanian, and Scott Galloway

BESIDES THE COMPANIES

The Fastest Overview of Alts

Alternative investments are non-traditional asset classes; typically, anything that’s not a stock, bond, ETF, mutual fund, etc. These can be…

• Technologized investments into private credit

• Fractionalized investing in expensive items, like cars

• Art investing platforms (think Masterworks)

• Consumables, like fine aged alcohols

• Crypto, DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain-based assets

By no means is this list exhaustive. The alt investments space is huge and growing.

A BRIEF PRIMER

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Last week, we broke down the LLM Infrastructure space, analyzed incumbent startups, and prophesied a future unicorn.

As you know, we’re hell-bent on uncovering future unicorns cruising under the radar. Preeminent companies are lean, quiet, and driven before reaching their watershed moments. By the time people start talking about them, it’s too late.

You won’t get editions from us very often. Weekly at best. Two reasons:

1. We’re balancing full-time VC/startup work with Return the Fund.

2. We prioritize depth, insight, and value. This is not a daily news publication… We hope that when you do get an email from us, it’s dense, valuable, actionable, and worth saving.

Thanks for reading today’s RTF. Let us know what you thought of this edition by answering the question below, and feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. 🤝 

Psst: None of our company picks are ever sponsored. All research and opinions are completely held by the Return the Fund team.