How Shaan Puri raised over $2.5 million for his first venture fund in 21 days with a tweet

On September 1, Shaan Puri sent a tweet announcing an ambitious new goal for himself. He wanted to raise at least $1 million in three weeks to launch his rolling fund, the new type of venture fund created by AngelList that allows investors to subscribe to a fund by paying in quarterly installments. 

To his surprise, within an hour he secured $70,000 in commitments.

Five days later, he had raised $1.5 million and temporarily closed the fund because too much money was coming in, he told Business Insider. He started putting people on a wait list so he could slowly add more.

In 21 days — his initial time frame — he blew by his goal, raising over $2.5 million. Now, about six weeks in, he’s at $2.6 million, he says, and there are still over 100 people on a waitlist.

Just as surprising, Puri says he’s only met one person out of the 73 who have so far committed to be limited partner investors in his fund. The 32-year-old, whose full-time job is senior director of product at Twitch, didn’t hop on a single pitch call to secure commitments — a stark contrast to the months-long process that most VCs go through to get funding for traditional venture funds.

Part of that success comes from AngelList’s new rolling fund structure, which makes it easier for individual accredited investors to invest in startups. Like all rolling funds, investors can cancel future payments at any time if they’re not satisfied.

Another factor is that his fund, dubbed Shaan’s All Access Fund, is a relatively affordable quarterly subscription of $6,000. 

But the 32-year-old investor says the real secret behind the fast millions he raked in was his loyal, 23,000-plus Twitter following.

“The next Silicon Valley has already happened and it’s on Twitter,” Puri told Business Insider. “It’s like going down Sand Hill Road.”

Puri’s following largely comes from his podcast launched in June, 2019, called My First Million. It hopes to inspire listeners with stories of bold business ideas and newly-minted, million-dollar fortunes.

With a podcast listeners “hear your voice” and “end up really getting to know you,” Puri says. That’s why he believes that many of those listeners became his first LPs. They include engineers and product managers at big tech companies, as well as doctors, lawyers and bankers eager to put their money for the first time in Silicon Valley startups.

Still this was the first time Puri had raised money for a venture fund, although he had been in the startup world for years, and had begun to recently dabble in angel investing. He started his career as the CEO of Monkey Inferno, a San Francisco startup studio founded by Michael Birch, before being hired as the CEO of live streaming app Blab and, later, the hired CEO of esports tournament platform Bebo. Puri sold Bebo to Twitch last year for an undisclosed sum, with TechCrunch reporting the price could have been as high as $25 million.

Puri says he received such an outpouring of interest for the fund from his Twitter followers that he handed over his account to his friend, tasking him with explaining to prospective LPs how they could invest in the All Access Fund. 

“I literally gave him my password,” Puri said. “I was like, go for it.”

A “one-click checkout” for startup investors

Puri’s interest in investing started while at Monkey Inferno where he hosted dinners for founders which involved food, mutual help and “founder therapy” sessions, as he described them.

In the process, Puri met the founders of future unicorns like AppLovin, Airtable, and Calm, as well as other rising startups like Loom, Clearbit, and Zola Electric. 

“I was sitting there in the front row where every investor would be salivating trying to get into deals,” he told Business Insider. “And so I thought, why am I not doing this?”

The limitation, of course, was that Puri didn’t have enough money to become an angel investor at that time, let alone an LP for a VC fund.

He was able to start angel investing two years ago, when Bebo was taking off, and more heavily last year, after Twitch bought the company. He’s done at least seven investments, he said. For instance, in 2019, he did angel rounds in the drone company Volansi and the Indian e-commerce company Dukaan, which just closed a $6 million seed funding round co-led by Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Ventures.

His rolling fund gave him the opportunity to go even further, allowing him to invest his LPs’ money without needing “a bunch of partners and staff” and “taking coffee meetings every day” as most traditional VCs do, he said.  

“If people want to invest with me, they can just join my fund with no friction,” he told Business Insider. “It’s just like going to Amazon and buying something. It’s like a one-click checkout to become an investor in my fund.”

Puri invests in very early-stage founders

So far, Puri’s rolling fund has invested in digital health startups like Fitness AI and Leda Health, as well as developer apps like Magic Labs and Doppler. His approach is to invest as early as possible in companies, betting more on the “founder and market that they’re going into” than the product itself, he said. 

Puri also says he doesn’t believe in an investing thesis, saying that the phrase is just “classic Silicon Valley’s ego that’s talking.”

“I think the best thing you can do is say I’m open, and I’m here to listen, and let founders come to you and tell you how the world is going to change,” he said. “The founders are the ones who are paving the way for what the future looks like.”

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