As someone who helped design than a 100 startups in various capacities and has been heavily involved with the whole VC scene one of the things that I kept seein

As someone who helped design than a 100 startups in various capacities and has been heavily involved with the whole VC scene one of the things that I kept seeing was the misalignment between the founders and the VC's type of skin in the game. A founder for most startups is either trying to find product/market fit or raising money. Many VC/Angels are great for the operational/financial side of the advice but at least in my experience when it came to finding a proper market for your company their advice often sounded right but wasn't possible to implement for various reasons as it was very generalized. One of the primary and perfectly reasonable reasons is that VC's are thinking about an entire portfolio of companies and doesn't have the same kind of skin in the game as the founder which mean they will think differently and less contextual about the companies. There is definitely an argument to be made for the fact that it's not the VC's job to care about the specific company more than they need to and there are plenty of VC's out there who are perfectly able to care properly but it's also a very exaggerated market and let's be frank not everyone who has money to invest have a lot of experience in "the work". After I left Square in 2017, I wanted to find a way to help both with getting much faster to product market fit but at the same time also having the opportunity to provide capital alongside which I believe will align my interest with the founders much more. So I ended up deciding to set up a creative venture studio which so far has been a great decision as it allows me both do my own and invest either capital or sweat equity in other companies AND I get to meet some really amazing people from around the world.