How to Make Money with Venture Investing

What’s the single best way to get rich? History tells us it is to start a successful company. Eight of the ten wealthiest Americans did it just that way. What’s the second best way to get rich? You invest early in a successful company before everyone realizes it will be successful. That’s how Warren Buffet did it.

But how does someone without the resources of Berkshire Hathaway find these opportunities? Until recently, the answer to that questions was you either had to do a lot of work or hire someone to do the work for you. If you can afford the $500,000 or greater minimum investment for most VC Funds or own a family office to vet investment opportunities, the world of venture investment has been wide open to you for generations. Lots of very wealthy people got even richer by investing in venture capital.

Unfortunately, most people, even those with million dollar plus net worths, can not afford the cost to invest in venture capital. Some “regular” millionaires, known as angel investors, will review 100s of deals to find the few that make sense and try to create their own venture capital portfolio. This is hard work, practically a full-time job. It is no wonder that only 3% of accredited investors ever invest in new ventures.

Today, however, iSelect is working to unlock investment access in early-stage private companies for the other 97% of accredited investors. The reason is simple : early-stage venture investing is part of a well-diversified portfolio.

The first question you may ask is, “but what if I don’t have that kind of money to invest?” And the answer is that you do not have to invest a fortune to make a lot of money. In fact, savvy investors typically allocate about 5% or less of their total investment portfolio to these types of alternative assets. Even with this low of an allocation, the possibility of high returns increases dramatically – all without risking the rest of the portfolio.

A second question you may have is, “but isn’t venture investing risky?” The answer is that it certainly is risky to invest all of your money into one company. Even investing in five companies is risky. But the risk decreases dramatically when your allocation is spread across fifteen to twenty companies over time, and chances are high that the aggregate set of investments will make you a nice return.

You may now be saying to yourself, “but I don’t have the time nor the expertise to devote to picking high-quality early-stage companies.” This is where iSelect comes in. Our experienced team spends hundred of hours selecting only the best companies. We currently have promising companies in our portfolio working on cures for cancer, solving the energy crisis, and developing technologies to make business better. These are companies in which some of the leading venture capital firms in the country are investing, and now you can participate too.

Consideration

With 2021 well underway and with public markets still strong, we think it is an important time to highlight some of the key private market, venture investment themes that iSelect fund has identified for the year. We believe technologies transforming the Agriculture, Food and Wellness markets will flourish, with a focus on four areas: technologies that enable better food choices to drive better health outcomes, technologies that drive better, more profitable farm operations, technologies that drive the Consumerization of Healthcare, and biome-based treatment technologies. At iSelect, we invest for impact AND performance. We offer qualified investors access to emerging growth companies through our national venture capital strategy. Our unique structure allows our investors to continue to invest in these companies as they develop.

Timing

Why is now the right time for venture? The answer is that now is not explicitly the right time. Venture is something we need in our economy at all times. Now is not better than any other particular time. The question is, why ever stop? When we look at the challenges we’re facing in food and healthcare the reality is there is someone, somewhere who has an insight about how to build a product that will solve those problems. And if they put the right resources to it, they will succeed. As long as we need new technology to make life better or make our lives more enjoyable, we need venture capital to help fuel those entrepreneurs.

What is iSelect as a product?

iSelect is a very unique product, but when you break it into its parts it’s fairly easy to understand. On the front end we’re a traditional venture capital fund. We have a diligence process. We have an investment process. We have categories of industries where we have focus and real expertise, and we invest in companies in those areas that meet requirements for the fund. On the back end we’re unique in that we don’t raise a large amount of capital at one time and deploy it over the life of our fund. Each deal that we bring onto the fund, our investors have to prove and determine to invest in that deal. We have to constantly prove our diligence standards. It’s accessible, transparent and easy for investors to come in and see our comprehensive process.

What is the ideal iSelect company?

We are looking for founders that are passionate and we want the problem they’re trying to solve to be big, real, and painful. We want the solution to be revolutionary and we want our capital to be able to help them solve that problem. We want to know that they have customers involved and that the solution they’ve come up with actually meets those customers’ and market needs. And we want the team to be capital efficient with the money they’re spending.

What does the ideal iSelect company look like?

We’re looking for a company that has an opportunity to have a 10x return to our investment or greater in a period of three to seven years. What excites us at iSelect are companies that are solving big problems. We want companies that are going to be the Monsantos of the future. Not just in the size and the scope, but the impact they have on people’s lives. We want to create positive impacts on people’s lives, so we invest in areas like agricultural production and areas like producing healthy foods for our kids. They are problems that impact real people’s lives on a daily basis. That’s what we’re trying to do at iSelect. We’re trying to solve the big problems out there. Find ways to bring capital to the entrepreneurs who are the real heroes out there getting up every morning, beating away at these things that are problems that you and me and everyone else faces in their everyday lives.

What is iSelect?

iSelect is a venture capital firm. What that means is we look at hundreds and hundreds of different companies and we apply tough diligence standards to each of them, looking at whether the team has a good plan for growing the business, whether the team is qualified and credible, and more. We do that to resolve the few who provide the best opportunities for investors. And then iSelect takes that smaller set of investments and goes to investors who are interested in venture capital and provides a way for them to invest in these companies, either individually or all at once. We co-invest alongside other venture capitalists. We source transactions through to an exit where the company would become public or get bought. And we manage that whole investment process on behalf of our investors.