The average Web3 VC pitch sounds like ours three years ago. “We have deep relationships throughout the ecosystem.” “We add value beyond capital.” “Our network is our advantage.” It’s not that any of these claims are lies; It’s just that everyone says them, which makes them effectively meaningless.
Liquidity providers (LPs) have heard this speech so many times that the words have lost all form. And yet, somehow, the industry continues to photocopy the same platform. Awesome slide with the logo. Vague thesis. Three points about “added value.” A track record that, for most emerging managers, does not yet exist. Repeat until you are funded or not.
My colleagues and I at TBV spent a lot of time wondering what we really had that no one else had. The answer, finally, was humiliating: not much. So we built something different.
This is what the data keeps trying to tell the industry and the industry keeps ignoring: Emerging managers actually outperform. Studies consistently show that they achieve top-quartile performance more frequently than established funds and deliver materially higher returns on average. The advantage is real. The problem is entirely structural: emerging managers can’t communicate a clear reason to customers to endorse them over others, so capital flows to brands rather than potential.
When we created TBV, we decided that the presentation had to be a product, not a promise. The question we came back to again and again was: what does a fund really own? Not who you know. The connections are not defensible. What have you built, what data have you generated, and what platform value do you create for founders? That is defensible.
The answer we came to was events. We weren’t just looking for a networking game or a branding exercise. We wanted to develop a human-centric deal engine. Web3 runs on conferences. Everyone already knows it. Founders travel thousands of miles to shake hands at side events. VCs pay huge sponsorship fees to get access to people they probably could have contacted via email. Calculating return on investment has always been confusing at best. What we wanted to do was change the model: instead of paying for access, build the environment. Own the data. Build relationships at scale and directly fuel sourcing, diligence, and value for everyone involved.
In 2025, our event series attracted more than 43,000 attendees and more than 100 partners. That didn’t happen by accident and it wasn’t just a marketing stunt. It was a deliberate infrastructure. Every interaction, every connection, every emerging trend detected in those rooms is powered by TBX, our AI-powered deal engine. The events and the background are the same wheel.
“We’re not the only ones reconsidering this. What’s interesting is how different the approaches are and how few of them look anything like a traditional fund.”
Another venture capital firm, Outlier Ventures, discovered this from a different angle. They leaned into the accelerator model: building a genuine platform of support around early-stage founders rather than simply writing checks and showing up to board meetings. The result is a fund with over 300 companies in its portfolio and a real reason for founders to choose them over others with a little more AUM. Paradigm went in a completely different direction: they went technical. They not only invest in protocols; they contribute to them. That kind of depth is really hard to replicate and LPs can see it.
What these models share, and what the next generation of interesting managers will share, is that the fund itself is a product with utility beyond capital. The question is not “how do we tell a better story?” It’s “how do we build something that makes the story self-evident?”
The good news is that there is no single answer. The event model works for us. Throttle model works for Outlier. A deep technical contribution works for Paradigm. What doesn’t work, what has never really worked, and what LPs are increasingly unwilling to pretend works, is a discourse built entirely on relationships that can’t be shown and values that can’t be measured.
Web3 is moving fast enough that administrators building real infrastructure now will be very difficult to displace in the future. Those still writing presentations about their networks three years from now will find that space has quietly emptied around them. I’m very curious to see what other models emerge. Competition in this space, when you are actually focused on doing something different, is the best thing that can happen to you.
