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Adeo Ressi Wants to Launch Thousands of New VC Funds
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By Yuliya Chernova, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Adeo Ressi, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, believes the world needs thousands more venture capital firms.
Ressi’s company, Decile Group, expects to turbocharge fund creation via a structure called Start Fund, under which people could set up funds within hours, without spending a cent on legal or other fees.
Ressi is chief executive of Decile, a fund-administration and investment company, and chairman of startup accelerator Founder Institute. Previously, he created the controversial website TheFunded, which featured anonymous reviews of venture capitalists.
In Ressi’s view, tech entrepreneurs are best set up to solve global challenges, all that is missing are the venture funds to back them up with capital.
“There need to be about 20,000 to 25,000 more VC firms in the world to get half of the major cities in the world to have functioning venture capital ecosystems,” Ressi says.
The number of venture funds trying to raise money has more than tripled between January 2020 and January 2025 to roughly 7,700 globally, according to research firm Preqin. But the number of venture funds that were able to close their raises plummeted last year to the lowest since 2014, per Preqin.
Ressi acknowledges fundraising is hard for emerging managers. Start Funds would accept LP commitments as small as $10,000, which would open up venture capital for more interested investors, he says.
Decile has already helped launch roughly 800 funds, with an average size of $12 million, via its venture-fund accelerator VC Lab, across cities in the U.S., as well as in countries from Mongolia to Namibia, Ressi says.
The Start Fund structure will increase the rate of fund formation by reducing launch costs, Ressi says, through automating fund administration via artificial intelligence, shorter limited-partner agreements and deals with banks. Decile acts as the management company and general partner of each fund that is launched, and splits management fees with investment leads. The leads could later easily transfer their funds into new management companies that they set up themselves, Ressi says.
Since introducing Start Fund last month, Decile has received hundreds of applications from entrepreneurs, angel investors, influencers and others, Ressi said.
Decile Group itself raised a $14 million seed funding round led by Tim Draper’s Draper Associates, Javelin Venture Partners and Geek Ventures.
Youngrok Kim, who runs the fund of funds Gree LP Fund and is familiar with Decile, says he admires what Ressi is trying to do and expects the efforts to benefit emerging fund managers.
“But I don’t believe it solves the biggest problem: fundraising,” Kim says.
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And now on to the news...
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ILLUSTRATION: ALEXANDRA CITRIN-SAFADI/WSJ; GETTY
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Tokenized stocks' wild prices. Crypto companies have grand plans to reinvent the stock market using blockchain technology. They are off to a bumpy start, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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Digital tokens designed to track popular stocks such as Amazon.com and Apple have deviated wildly from the price of the underlying shares since their launch two weeks ago. Robinhood Markets is facing scrutiny from its European regulator after it launched a token designed to let investors bet on OpenAI—without getting permission from the artificial-intelligence startup. And even some industry insiders fret that such “tokenized” stocks create opportunities for bad actors to engage in insider trading and market manipulation without getting caught.
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2.7%
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Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, faster than May’s increase of 2.4%.
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Trump Executive Order to Help Open Up 401(k)s to Private Markets
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President Trump is expected to sign an executive order in the coming days designed to help make private-market investments more available to U.S. retirement plans, according to people familiar with the matter, WSJ reports.
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The order would instruct the Labor Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to provide guidance to employers and plan administrators on including investments like private assets in 401(k) plans, the people said.
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The details of the order aren’t yet final and are still subject to review, the people said.
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Secret to Better Airplane Navigation Could Be Inside the Earth’s Crust
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Satellite-based global positioning systems, or GPS, have been the primary method of aerospace navigation for decades. But with GPS jamming and spoofing on the rise, the industry is pushing for an update, and fast. Now, Airbus’s Silicon Valley-based innovation center, Acubed, and artificial intelligence and quantum-focused Google spinout SandboxAQ are on a mission to demonstrate an alternate way, WSJ reports. It involves a small, toaster-size box, lasers, a single GPU chip and a deep knowledge of the Earth’s magnetic field.
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Funds
Verified Capital launched with a $175 million debut fund, which will invest across sectors including AI, SaaS, infrastructure, marketplaces and payments.
People
Notable Capital added its first Israel-based employee with the appointment of Eliya Elon as entrepreneur-in-residence.
Provarity AI, which streamlines and automates the proof-of-concept process for presales engineering teams, appointed Steve Davis as chief executive officer, replacing Chris Cabrera.
Trust management platform Vanta named Scott Holden to the post of chief marketing officer. He most recently served as CMO at Brex.
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CertifID, a wire fraud protection platform for the real estate industry, scored $47.5 million in Series C funding led by Centana Growth Partners. The company has offices in Austin, Texas and Grand Rapids, Mich.
Unify, an AI-native platform for go-to-market teams, closed a $40 million Series B round. Battery Ventures led the investment, with General Partner Dharmesh Thakker joining the company’s board.
HOPE Hydration, a Miami-based startup that delivers filtered water through its digitally connected water refill stations, completed a $20 million Series A round. Pentair led the funding, which included additional participation from Burnt Island Ventures.
Heron, a New York-based startup using AI to automate workflows in business lending, equipment finance and insurance, raised $16 million in Series A funding. Insight Partners led the round, which included contributions from Y Combinator, BoxGroup and Flex Capital.
Felt, an Oakland, Calif.-based geographic information systems platform, picked up a $15 million investment. Energize Capital led the round, which included participation from Bain Capital Ventures.
Linkby, a Sydney-headquartered PR platform for consumer brands, secured $15 million in Series B financing led by Volition Capital.
Tavrn, a San Francisco-based legal tech platform, landed $15 million in Series A funding. Led by Left Lane Capital, the round included participation from A* and BoxGroup.
Gen Phoenix, a U.K.-based recycled leather manufacturer, secured a $15 million investment led by Material Impact.
Parade DB, a New York-based startup building search infrastructure on Postgres, grabbed $12 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the investment, which included additional participation from Y Combinator and others.
Rwazi, a Los Angeles-based AI platform that transforms raw consumer activity into contextual actions for global brands, fetched $12 million in Series A funding led by Bonfire Ventures.
Collate, creator of an open source project for data intelligence, raised a $10 million Series A round. Venrock led the funding, with Unusual Ventures and Karman Ventures also participating. Ganesh Srinivasan, a partner at Venrock, will join the board.
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Hauling material at an MP Materials rare-earth mine in Mountain Pass, Calif., the only operating rare-earth mine in the U.S. PHOTO: BRIDGET BENNETT FOR WSJ
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Crypto-focused PAC Fairshake amasses $141 million war chest ahead of 2026 elections (The Block)
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The new third rail in Silicon Valley: investing in Chinese AI (Bloomberg)
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