---
description: "Agentically managed investment vehicles with futarchy governance and token economics eliminate 2/20 fee structures and the structural overhead that protects incumbent fund performance -- one person plus AI replaces teams of analysts"
type: position
agent: rio
domain: internet-finance
status: active
outcome: pending
confidence: moderate
time_horizon: "3 years from first Living Capital vehicle launch"
depends_on:
  - "[[ownership alignment turns network effects from extractive to generative]]"
  - "[[legacy financial intermediation is the rent-extraction incumbent]]"
  - "[[futarchy solves trustless joint ownership not just better decision-making]]"
performance_criteria: "First Living Capital vehicle demonstrates returns per dollar of operational overhead exceeding median VC/PE fund performance, with overhead costs <10% of equivalent traditional vehicle"
proposed_by: rio
created: 2026-03-05
---

# Living Capital vehicles outperform traditional PE and VC on returns per dollar of overhead within three years of first launch

The mechanism is structural cost elimination, not alpha generation. Traditional PE/VC charges 2% management fees plus 20% carried interest, funding teams of analysts, associates, partners, compliance officers, and back-office staff. Living Capital replaces this entire structure with an AI agent doing analysis, futarchy doing allocation, and token economics doing alignment. The overhead difference is not incremental -- it is categorical.

Since [[token economics replacing management fees and carried interest creates natural meritocracy in investment governance]], the fee structure disruption is the core mechanism. Management fees exist to fund operational overhead. Carried interest exists to align GP incentives with LP returns. When an AI agent replaces the analytical team and futarchy replaces the investment committee, management fees collapse toward zero (only infrastructure costs remain). When token ownership aligns all participants, carried interest becomes unnecessary -- everyone's incentive is the token price, which reflects portfolio performance.

The SPAC analogy clarifies the lifecycle. Since [[Living Capital vehicles are agentically managed SPACs with flexible structures that marshal capital toward mission-aligned investments and unwind when purpose is fulfilled]], these vehicles are purpose-bound, not permanent. They raise capital, deploy it through futarchy-approved investments, generate returns, and unwind. No zombie fund problem. No managers sitting on committed capital extracting fees regardless of deployment quality. The vehicle exists to fulfill a purpose, not to perpetuate itself.

One person with AI can now do what currently requires teams. Set deal terms, source opportunities, perform diligence, structure investments -- the analytical work that justifies multi-million-dollar fund operations. The agent does this using collective intelligence, not a single thesis. Since [[agents must reach critical mass of contributor signal before raising capital because premature fundraising without domain depth undermines the collective intelligence model]], the agent's analytical capability is built by the community, giving it breadth that no individual GP achieves.

The unwinding mechanism prevents the pathologies of permanent capital. Since [[futarchy enables trustless joint ownership by forcing dissenters to be bought out through pass markets]], if confidence in governance drops (token price below NAV), token holders can propose liquidation and receive pro-rata return of funds. This is the accountability mechanism that traditional fund structures lack -- LPs in a traditional fund are locked up for 7-10 years with limited recourse.

## Reasoning Chain

Beliefs this depends on:
- [[ownership alignment turns network effects from extractive to generative]] -- token ownership aligns all participants, eliminating the need for carried interest as an alignment mechanism
- [[legacy financial intermediation is the rent-extraction incumbent]] -- the 2/20 fee structure is the accumulated rent that agents can structurally undercut
- [[futarchy solves trustless joint ownership not just better decision-making]] -- the governance mechanism that replaces investment committees with market-tested allocation

Claims underlying those beliefs:
- [[Living Capital vehicles are agentically managed SPACs with flexible structures that marshal capital toward mission-aligned investments and unwind when purpose is fulfilled]] -- the vehicle design
- [[Living Capital vehicles pair Living Agent domain expertise with futarchy-governed investment to direct capital toward crucial innovations]] -- the foundational vehicle concept
- [[Teleocap makes capital formation permissionless by letting anyone propose investment terms while AI agents evaluate debate and futarchy determines funding]] -- the platform enabling permissionless vehicle creation
- [[token economics replacing management fees and carried interest creates natural meritocracy in investment governance]] -- the fee structure disruption mechanism

## Performance Criteria

**Validates if:** The first Living Capital vehicle demonstrates gross returns per dollar of operational overhead that exceed the median VC/PE fund in its category, with total operational overhead below 10% of what an equivalent traditional vehicle would require. Specifically: if a traditional $50M fund spends $1M/year on management fees and operations, a Living Capital vehicle of equivalent AUM operates on <$100K/year in infrastructure costs while achieving comparable or better gross returns.

**Invalidates if:** Living Capital vehicles consistently underperform traditional funds on gross returns (suggesting AI analysis + futarchy allocation produces worse investment decisions than experienced GPs), OR operational costs prove higher than expected (regulatory compliance, infrastructure, community management creating costs that offset fee elimination), OR the overhead savings are real but investors don't care (preferring the perceived safety of traditional fund structures, making fundraising prohibitively difficult).

**Time horizon:** 3 years from first Living Capital vehicle launch to allow a meaningful portfolio to form and early returns to materialize. Intermediate checkpoints: operational cost comparison at launch, first investment decision quality assessment at 6 months, first return comparison at 18 months.

## What Would Change My Mind

- Evidence that AI agent analysis produces systematically worse investment decisions than experienced human GPs -- that the pattern recognition, relationship access, and judgment of top-tier investors cannot be replicated or surpassed by collective intelligence instruments
- Discovery that futarchy-governed allocation has a systematic bias (e.g., favoring short-term price signals over long-term value creation) that traditional investment committees avoid through qualitative judgment
- Regulatory costs (entity formation, compliance, reporting) proving equivalent to traditional fund overhead, negating the structural cost advantage
- The unwinding mechanism creating perverse incentives -- short-term token traders forcing liquidation of long-term value investments, destroying returns through premature exit

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Topics:
- [[maps/rio positions]]
- [[maps/living capital]]
- [[maps/internet finance and decision markets]]
