Bradley Tusk, co -founder and management partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told Techcrunch in today’s episode of capital that we know he died. And it has been for the last four years.
“Maybe there are some QV that I’ve never heard of what is awake with liquidity in the last two years, but we haven’t turned $ 1 in capital into our LPS in four years,” Tusk said.
VC has been in approximate years thanks to the highest interest rates, starting ratings from 2021 high levels, and IPO and M&A stimulated transactions.
Many investors had kept their breath for President Donald Trump to renovate the LCA landscape with deregulating measures and pro-business tax reforms. However, uncertainty after the executive orders of Trump’s records, trade wars driven by tariffs and dismantling the federal agencies has reduced the projected increase in VC activity.
Or as Tusk said, “I just don’t know many serious economists who think a trade war is a good idea for anyone’s economy.”
So tusk is bending over the traditional VC model and has decided not to collect a fourth fund. On the contrary, it is shifting concentration to a “capital for services” model, which allows Tusk to accept equality in exchange for starting to navigate regulatory facilities, legislative communications and government procurement.
For tusk, capital for services returns to its roots. In 2010, when he had just begun his Tusk Strategies Political Counseling Firm, what was then a small transport technology company called Uber recorded its services. Uber had no money to pay, so they offered capital. Tusk spent the coming years “conducting campaigns across the US to legalize Uber and Ride-Distribution”.
Creating regulatory frameworks for divisive technologies to save beginnings from politics death has been bread and butter tusk for years, an expertise he won through previous roles as the Michael Bloomberg Chairman of the Illinois Deputy Governor.
All the “real things VC”, like collecting funds from the LPS and “Compliance, Board Places, Portfolio Building”, just began to feel like a distraction from the kind of work he actually likes to do.
And he feels like a shortcut to do the job he loves, while still earning more money than he can make as a classic enterprise investor.
“When I realized that I could get just as easily at the lids tables and get equality from the beginnings I like in exchange for my expertise, the traditional model just didn’t make much sense,” Tusk said.
“I actually earned more money when I was in capital capital because although there is less lever than there is a venture control, you keep 100% of the revenue,” he said. “While in traditional ventures, I have to return investment capital to investors. I have to repay the fees, then I have to give them 80 cents in the dollar,” he said.
Tusk Venture Partners will continue to support his existing portfolio companies until the Fund’s life cycle is completed in 2031.
