Waqas Shota Ali
Takemark / public record
The instrument is wrong, and Pakistan is where the right one is cheapest to test
A classic fund cannot reach a builder in Lahore at first traction: the cheque is too big and the diligence runs on data he does not generate. Smaller tickets against parent-company equity can. The risks are why the market is still cheap.
Supporting the take 05
The last generation of founder-friendly funds died of its instrument, not its thesis.
Revenue-share funds found beloved working founders and closed anyway. Tyler Tringas put it plainly: the thesis absolutely works, but the business model does not. The instrument capped the winners, and the operating model could not fund itself.
External sourceWhat ended the revenue-share generationAUG 2026
2026 changes the arithmetic, by roughly two to three times, not ten.
A lean team running on AI genuinely costs less to operate. That is enough to make the idea that failed in 2024 workable now, at cheque sizes far below what a US fund must deploy to be worth its own diligence.
Personal recordWhy 2026, the punchline20 AUG 2026
Equity in a person already works commercially, in the creator economy.
Slow Ventures raised a 60 million dollar creator fund in February 2025, taking roughly 10 percent of a creator’s holding company, with university endowments as LPs. It proves the mechanism is fundable. It proves nothing about returns: no Fund II, no disclosed results.
External sourceSlow Ventures creator fundFEB 2025
The gap is diligence, and first revenue is the substitute for an audience.
Slow’s process reads public audience data that a quiet builder never generates. First organic revenue is a harder signal than engagement metrics, which is the swap this instrument makes.
Personal recordThe diligence swap20 AUG 2026
Risk inverted: the multinationals leaving is the entry signal.
Telenor exited, Microsoft closed its office after 25 years, Careem shut its consumer service. Heavy structures fail there. A lean entrant carries none of that weight, and every risk that keeps larger capital out keeps the entry price low.
External sourceThe multinationals-exit record11 AUG 2026
Challenging it 02
The creator may be the only irreplaceable person.
Their brand equity sits with the individual, which is precisely why person-level equity underwrites well there. For software builders it is unproven and nobody has published the debate.
External sourceThe irreplaceability objection20 AUG 2026
The market it is aimed at is still pre-revenue.
Participation is surging while visible revenue is tiny and no micro-exit has been found. Every claim about this market has to survive that sentence first.
Personal recordPakistan, the honest seeds20 AUG 2026
What would change the author’s mind
A US fund actually writing small cheques into first-traction builders there would close the gap. So would finding a local fund that already runs this quietly, which publishing this should flush out.
Since this was marked
Acquisitions were 94 percent of US venture-backed exits by count in 2025
Per PitchBook-NVCA. That is the door a one-to-eleven-person team can walk through, and it replaced a widely repeated figure laundered from a marketing blog.
Slow Ventures raises 60 million dollars for equity in creators themselves
University endowments as LPs and 700 applicants for the first deal. Proof the mechanism is fundable, with nothing yet proving it returns.
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Pakistan becomes a hub for AI solopreneursthe market this instrument is forCounter-arguments from readers
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