The following article was written as part of a keynote I gave for a Banking and Payments Conference in Africa, to introduce Bankers to the art of the possible in the banking and payments industry. 

“General Partners (GPs) crowdfund from Limited Partners (LPs).” - Samson Williams 

As a financial anthropologist, I find Humans in Venture Capital fascinating. The humans in Venture Capital (VC) are different from the culture of Venture Capital. Yes, humans do come together to build and create the culture of VC. But individually they are unique, and able to operate and make independent decisions without regard to so-called cultural norms. I bring this up because one of the odd relics of VC culture is that nearly universally, these otherwise independent and autonomous humans engaged in Venture Capital, fall victim to a cancerous myth of VC culture. What is that myth of VC lore? The strongly held misconception that crowdfunding is a resource only for businesses who can’t secur...more