Mission Statement

by Collin West

Eulogy for VC: And a Masterplan for Resurrection

Venture capital, as it exists today, deserves to die.

This year, roughly 250,000 companies worldwide will attempt to raise money. About half of those will be in the U.S. Many will succeed who shouldn’t. Many more, who should, won’t. VC is no longer functioning as the asset class it was designed to be: a catalyst for innovation and a driver of economic growth. Instead, it has become bloated, inefficient, and increasingly harmful to the startup ecosystem.

The Case for Death

VC sourcing is broken. Most investors don’t know who to meet, relying instead on warm introductions, trendy sectors, local connections—or, worse, random luck. This inefficiency wastes everyone’s time, especially founders’, as VCs chase coffee chats and Zoom calls with companies they’ll never back. The result? Less time for due diligence and less ability to fulfill the promises VCs make to the founders they do fund. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s draining the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, Big VC has grown into an oligopoly, distorting returns and suppressing innovation. The management fees are so lucrative that scale—not performance—has become the business model. Bigger funds mean bigger checks, forcing capital into startups that don’t need it and often can’t handle it. These mega-firms also ignore smaller companies that historically deliver better returns, effectively pricing themselves out of the early-stage market. It’s a recipe for stagnation.

And then there’s the impact on LPs. With >60% of Series A rounds losing money under the traditional approach, LPs are understandably cautious. They stick with the “safe” bets—the asset-managing IBMs of VC—leading to tepid returns that discourage future investment. Venture capital remains a tiny sliver of global capital allocation, dwarfed by private equity buyouts. This aversion to risk ensures that the asset class remains small and underfunded, unable to fulfill its potential.

VC is failing founders, investors, and innovation itself. It’s time for the old model to die.

The Case for Resurrection

Yet, despite its flaws, venture capital is the most important asset class in the world. It funds innovation. It powers progress. Without VC, there’s no modern medicine, no transformative technology, no future. The problem isn’t that venture capital exists—it’s that it hasn’t evolved. The good news is that evolution is possible. The tools are here, and the time is now.

Imagine a venture ecosystem that is efficient, equitable, and truly impactful. A system that uses technology to scalably find and fund the best teams, regardless of their networks or geography. A system that dramatically reduces the failure rate, focuses on funding early-stage innovation, and delivers consistent returns to LPs. This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a plan.

A Masterplan for Resurrection

Step One: Build

We started with the Series A fund—a data-driven VC model from day one. We proved that sourcing at scale doesn’t mean sacrificing quality. By analyzing “what” teams know instead of “who” they know, we showed that it’s possible to eliminate inefficiencies while delivering top-tier returns. Lean, scalable, and focused, our Series A fund laid the groundwork for what comes next.

Step Two: Expand

Now, we’re going even earlier stage. Building a pre-seed and seed fund in partnership with the best early-stage investors in the world. Using our data platform, we identify the world’s best talent—the people who should be founding companies but haven’t yet. Then we do what Big VC can’t: convince them to quit their jobs and start solving the world’s biggest problems. Nearly all of our dollars will go to funding innovation rather than the kombucha machine after a Series C round. This isn’t just investment; it’s intervention, creating new founders and new opportunities from the ground up.

Step Three: Scale

The future of VC is global. We aim to overlay the globe with data-driven funds across sectors, stages, and geographies. This includes not only funding startups but also creating tools to help LPs identify the best Little VC firms—the ones driving real innovation. This is how we resurrect venture capital: by scaling it intelligently, redistributing capital into the hands of the innovators who will define our future.

The Mission

At Ensemble, we believe in a new era of venture capital—one that’s scalable, sustainable, and truly impactful. By leveraging technology, we’re building a model that solves the inefficiencies of traditional VC while empowering the world’s best founders to create groundbreaking companies. We’re not here to preserve the status quo. We’re here to rebuild VC from the ground up.

This is the scale required to resurrect venture capital. To encourage a new era of building. To change the slope of innovation for generations to come.