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Start free trial →This Week in Startups · Startups & Venture · November 2026
The panel was discussing family offices shifting money into SPVs and a fall in emerging-manager fund closes. Ben says venture has become a barbell, and the mid-sized funds are being squeezed out.
…we should do some big funds. At the same time, I think there's a little thing happening where folks who are in four or five or six platforms are going, you know, I'm actually going to cut some of these because they're in all the same companies. And I now have six exposures to blank and I've got 2%.
They're all, I mean, it's regression to the mean. You're just going to do the average very quickly. And the average inventor is not pretty.
And so they're going to move away. And I think you're going to continue to see a real market exist at the early, early stage and a real market exist in the megafund space. And the megafund space is going to take up almost all the capital, but there's still enough for great managers early. The middle middle is cooked. By the way, that is like so not a like innovative thought that the middle is cooked. The middle is cooked. The middle is cooked, of course.
And they have no rights, right, Jenny? You have to, as an early stage fund, you have to write that side letter. You have to demand, you know, information rights, a board observer see, whatever it is, and of course, pro rata, or don't do the deal. And then when they try to erase your pro rot and…
He's like, I
do. Don't get me started