This essay is being written. It accompanies the SPV Fee Calculator.
SPVs have democratized venture capital access. AngelList alone has facilitated thousands of SPVs, letting individual LPs participate in deals they'd never have seen. That's the good part.
The bad part is the fee structure. And it gets worse when you stack.
A 3.0x gross return through a stacked SPV can net you 1.88x. That's not a rounding error. That's 37% of your returns evaporating into fees.
Here's how it works: you invest $100K through an SPV. The SPV charges 2% management fee and 20% carry. Reasonable enough. But the SPV itself is investing into a fund that also charges 2% and 20%. Now you have two layers of fees compounding against your returns. The management fee alone -- 2% on 2%, annually, for 5-7 years -- eats a material chunk before carry even kicks in.
The math isn't hidden. It's just not shown. GPs aren't lying about fees; they're simply not modeling the cumulative impact. Most LP dashboards show gross returns, not fee-adjusted net. The gap between what you think you're making and what you're actually keeping can be shocking.
We built the SPV Fee Calculator with a "stacked fees" toggle specifically for this reason. Toggle it on and watch your 3.0x become 1.88x. That's the conversation every LP should have before writing a check.
Full essay coming soon. Try the calculator →