Story
Tusk Ventures: turn regulatory consulting into equity in Uber and Airbnb
Shaan profiles Bradley Tusk, an ex-policy operator who helped Uber fight taxi cartels and city regulators, then took equity that became one of the decade's best angel returns. He repeated it with Airbnb and built a $100M services firm paired with a venture arm.
“And then he got to invest and Uber was like one of the best investments of the decade for an angel investor. And he did that also with Airbnb, another group that had policy questions. And so any startup that had a regulatory or policy challenge, which actually many do, uh, it was like, oh, we should include Tusk in our round.”
Idea
Buy a law firm and bolt a venture fund onto it
Shaan pitches the next wave of VC: service businesses that startups already need (legal, recruiting) that invest alongside their service. Using Tusk Ventures as proof, he suggests buying a law firm, slashing prices, and raising a fund to invest in every client.
“somebody's going to go buy a law firm and be like, hey, here's what we're doing. We're cutting prices down to the bare minimum. We're going to be ultra client-friendly, and we're going to just invest off— we're going to, we're going to raise a fund out of this legal, you know, this law firm to invest in all the companies that we work with that, that we do this for. I think it's a good idea.”
Steal thisBuy a service business startups need (legal, recruiting, ads) and add a venture arm that invests in every client.