(2021-11-12) A Former Facebook Vp Thinks Investing In Humans Is The Future Of Vc

A Former Facebook VP Thinks Investing in Humans Is the Future of VC. When Sam Lessin first tried as a young man to create a company based around this idea near the turn of the century, he admits, the world was not ready for such a proposal

the firm has gone and done it, joining a few individual investors in spending $1.7 million in the future of Marina Mogilko, a 31-year-old YouTube personality with multiple popular channels that touch on topics like life in Silicon Valley and learning new languages.

For decades now, Sam Lessin has been ruminating on an idea: What if instead of investing in companies, you could invest in people?

He believes that he is setting society on a path where we are free to invest in our favorite humans through multiple venture rounds, providing young, brilliant people with the money to fund a path to success that doesn’t exist today.

agreed to give Slow Ventures 5 percent of her creator earnings for 30 years

Mogilko is free to do whatever she wants with the money, which she received right away, she told me. “This is the Silicon Valley approach to investing in people,” Mogilko said. “Here in Silicon Valley, people are just betting on you to become the next unicorn, and they don't want to control your journey.”

There are a few notable caveats. Slow Ventures and its fellow investors don’t start taking back a percentage unless she’s making good money—in the range of “hundreds of thousands of dollars,”

The decision to invest directly in humans brings about a host of legal, ethical, and moral questions that Lessin will surely need to confront head-on.

plus a percentage from any IP she develops, even beyond that three-decade timeline.

And the investors only get a percentage of the money she earns as a creator, which leads to some squishy definitional questions

Many firms have already moved toward investing in “creator-focused start-ups,” as the New York Times put it in July

To make a decision, Mogilko created a model in which different scenarios played out: one in which she stopped producing content; a second in which she continued to grow at the same pace; and a third where she became a huge success—Netflix deals, books, the whole shebang

She realized that she could use the upfront venture funds to “focus on something bigger” than the next slate of brand deals. Mogilko wasn’t exactly sure how she’d use the money, and she admits she’s figuring it out as she goes along, but she has already started to use the cash to invest in five startups related to the creator economy

By applying the venture model to humanity, Lessin believes he might have stumbled into the solution to one of society’s longest-standing and most burdensome issues: debt.

“VC, the model really is … 80 percent of things are write-offs, 20 percent work, and then 5 percent drive everything.”