Rigid Ownership Targets Break the Network That Makes Seed Investing Work, Scribble's Weil Argues

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What's New

A seed fund's check size determines whether other investors, angels, and founders will share their best deals, and a fixed ownership target destroys that flow in exchange for a spreadsheet number. Elizabeth Weil, Founder and Managing Partner of Scribble Ventures, argues this in a podcast on How I Invest. Scribble writes $750,000 to $1.5 million checks from core funds of $50 to $90 million, holds no ownership requirement, and positions itself as Switzerland on the cap table. Fund one returned 75% of capital as DPI and is marked above 5x, which Weil says beats concentrated peers. The claim to test is that being in the top 1% of companies matters more than owning 15% of them.

Why It Matters

The dominant LP diligence question for seed managers is ownership: 15 to 20% initial stakes, lead or co-lead every core deal, fund math built on a single winner returning the fund. Weil says founders are strong-armed by investors who claim they must own 15% when it is only a playbook, and that a small fund's collaborative posture is what earns the introduction in the first place. On the other side are the multi-stage platforms with operations teams and the seed funds that scaled to $500 million and now compete with Sand Hill. Weil manages roughly $280 million and sells right-sized funds, so the argument is her positioning. She also concedes her strategy stops working if check sizes rise.

Big Picture Drivers

Venture is a network business at every stage of the funnel: Seeing, picking, diligencing, winning, and helping all run through the Scribble Network of operators and founders, many of whom are small LPs. Each strong relationship raises deal quality, which raises returns, which raises LP referrals.
Collaboration is downstream of check size: A $1 million check gets introduced by angels and other firms; a $5 million lead check competes with them. Weil says the model breaks if Scribble grows its core fund.
Ownership targets misprice access: $10,000 in OpenAI or Anthropic at inception beats 15% of a company that never breaks out. Weil sets a minimum bar for whether a check justifies legal docs, then optimizes for being in the best companies over hitting a percentage.
Fees distort strategy: Larger funds turn investors into asset managers who make consensus bets to fill the next deck. Scribble commits more than 5% of GP capital in cash and says its fees do not make the partners rich, which keeps pay tied to exits.
Breakout investing extends the relationship: Missing a company at seed does not end the opportunity. The breakout fund writes $1 to $3 million into Series B and later, one-third into existing Scribble companies where the firm holds insider knowledge, underwriting at least 10x from entry.
Non-consensus decisions require permissionless conviction: Any Scribble investment partner can write a check. Post-mortems show the best outcomes came from deals where one partner hated it and another saw something weird.

By The Numbers

75% DPI, 5x+ marked: Scribble One, a $50 million 2020 vintage raised entirely over Zoom.
$750,000 to $1.5 million: Core fund check size at pre-seed and seed, with no ownership target.
$50, $55, $90 million: Core funds one through three, plus a $30 million breakout fund and a second at roughly $55 million.
100x and 10x: Return multiple Scribble requires itself to envision for a core investment and a breakout investment respectively.
6: Total team, with two full-time investing partners, an operator-in-residence partner, and no operations platform.
5%+: GP commit in cash, not cashless.

Key Trends to Watch

Investors leaving platforms to get back to investing: Weil expects the compliance, politics, and management-company burden at large firms to keep pushing strong investors into small funds. Watch spinout volume and whether LPs shift allocations toward them.
Ownership orthodoxy under pressure: If more small funds report DPI and marks that beat concentrated peers, the 15% rule loses standing with LPs. Watch how fund-of-funds diligence questions evolve.
Firing LPs as standard practice: Weil turned down large checks and removed LPs who generated work without substance. Expect emerging managers with real DPI to curate LP bases more aggressively.
Breakout as a second entry point: With companies scaling to Series B faster than ever, watch whether seed firms formalize later-stage vehicles built on existing founder relationships.

Memorable Quotes

"Our fund size is our strategy." The line that ties check size, collaboration, and returns together.
"That investor does not have to own 15%. They put in their playbook and they're strong arming you to tell you that." What Weil tells founders juggling term sheets around ownership demands.
"Consensus doesn't see around corners." Why any partner can write a check and why post-mortems favor the deals someone hated.
"You will only upload your resume to a job site once in your life and every job after that will come from somebody you know." The relationship compounding she applies to founders, LPs, and hires alike.

The Wrap

The thesis holds if Scribble's funds two and three deliver DPI comparable to fund one at check sizes that stay under $1.5 million, and if small collaborative funds keep showing marks and distributions ahead of concentrated seed peers across the 2020 to 2025 vintages. It also holds if founders keep reporting that a sub-2% holder is the most helpful investor on the cap table. It fails if the largest outcomes concentrate in founders who took only lead checks, leaving small participatory positions diluted below the level that moves a fund, or if fund one's 5x mark proves an artifact of a single vintage. The next three to five years of realized exits from the 2020 and 2022 core funds will settle whether access beat ownership.