I’m a millennial investor living in San Francisco — which probably tells you a few things already: I drink too much coffee, I believe in the power of code, and I’ve watched my “diversified” portfolio rise and fall with the S&P like it’s strapped to a rollercoaster built in 2008.
For the better part of a decade, I did what all the books and blogs told me: low-cost ETFs, real estate when I could afford it, a sprinkle of crypto (because, hey, it’s the Bay Area). But after 2022 and 2023’s macro gut punches — inflation, rate hikes, tech layoffs — I started asking myself a simple question: Is this really diversification?
The answer? Not really. At least not anymore.
So I went looking for something different. Not YOLO meme stocks. Not whatever the latest AI token was promising. I wanted exposure to the kind of asymmetric opportunities that the big guys — the funds, the family offices, the institutions — have been riding for decades. I wanted venture.
Here’s the thing, though: traditional venture capital is gated as hell. If you’re not an LP or well-networked in Sand Hill Road circles, you’re basically locked out. Even in a city like San Francisco, where every third person is either founding or funding something, actual access is limited.
Then I stumbled onto https://axevil.com. I don’t even remember how I found it — probably a late-night rabbit hole after reading one too many posts on AI infrastructure plays — but the concept stuck. It wasn’t just another syndicate or crowdfunding site. It was a platform curating early-stage deals in sectors I actually understood and cared about: deep tech, applied AI, next-gen infrastructure. And more importantly, it was designed for investors like me — individuals who want in, but without pretending to be a mini VC firm.
The first deal I looked at was a stealth startup building hardware accelerators for transformer-based models. Niche? Absolutely. But it came with clear thesis notes, due diligence summaries, and direct founder access. It wasn’t a generic pitch deck and a prayer. It felt like venture, minus the velvet rope.
I’ve now deployed across four deals. Am I expecting 100x exits? No. But that’s not the point. For the first time, I feel like my capital is working on the frontier, not just parked in companies that hit their growth ceiling five years ago.
There are risks, obviously. Liquidity is non-existent. The timelines are long. Some companies will fail. But guess what? That’s true of every early-stage investment — and it’s why the payoff, when it works, can be so huge.
The bigger lesson, for me, is philosophical. Traditional portfolios are built for a world that’s slowly changing. But the world now moves fast — really fast. Innovation doesn’t trickle down through public markets anymore. By the time a tech company IPOs, most of the explosive growth is already gone. If I want to ride the actual waves of transformation — not just watch them from the beach — I need to paddle out earlier.
Platforms like https://axevil.com made that possible for me. Not by removing risk, but by helping me understand it. The transparency is what sold me. I could ask questions, see the market landscape, get honest commentary. It felt collaborative, not extractive.
Also, being based in San Francisco helped in an unexpected way. I’d see some of these startups pop up in conversation at meetups, or hear engineers casually mention projects they’d left Big Tech to join. That ambient signal reinforced my conviction. I wasn’t just backing ideas; I was backing movements.
So here I am. Still holding my ETFs. Still contributing to my Roth IRA. But also, for the first time, feeling like an actual participant in the future — not just a consumer of it.
If you’re in a similar headspace — frustrated with passive strategies, curious about the early-stage world, but wary of the hype — my advice is this: start slow. Read everything. Ask hard questions. Be skeptical. But don’t assume access is impossible. The walls are coming down. You just have to know where the doors are.
One of them, for me, was https://axevil.com.
And who knows? Maybe ten years from now, one of those obscure names in my alt-portfolio will be the next Snowflake. Or maybe not. But at least I’ll know I didn’t just wait for the future to show up — I went out and found it.