The fund · Not an offer
Diligence, run as research.
What we intend to build, and exactly where it stands.
Status, before anything else
The fund is not raised. The vehicle is not formed. No capital has been committed or soft‑circled. Nothing on this page is an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, an invitation, or a financial promotion. It describes a strategy under development.
The thesis
Buy control positions in operating businesses whose core work is high‑repetition and document‑heavy. Deploy agentic infrastructure to reset unit economics. Hold for 12 to 18 months. Exit.
The hold period is the most doubted claim in the model, and it is plausible only because of the control position. A minority investor cannot force a transformation through an organization. A control owner can. Whenever the hold period is challenged, that is the answer.
First target sector Accounting and auditing
The same method, where the incentive to fool yourself is strongest.
Due diligence is evidence synthesis conducted under pressure to reach a particular conclusion. Deal fever is the best‑documented failure mode in the asset class. The method maps across almost without translation.
| In research | In diligence |
|---|---|
| Pre‑registered hypotheses and kill criteria | An investment thesis and walk‑away conditions, written before diligence begins |
| Blinded retrieval | Analysts who do not know which way the partner is leaning |
| Adversarial refutation | Someone paid to try to kill the deal, with a verdict taxonomy rather than an opinion |
| Independent verification | Load‑bearing numbers checked by someone with no stake in closing |
| The thesis gate | An investment committee where “kill” is a live and cheap outcome |
| A published error rate | Diligence accuracy reported to investors |
| “What would change our conclusions” | Stated conditions under which we would exit early or write down |
The second‑to‑last row is the one that matters.
An investor report containing our diligence error rate, and a list of theses that turned out wrong, is not a thing funds produce.
The red team is structural rather than cultural. The reviewer is never the deal sponsor, their compensation does not depend on the transaction closing, their original findings stay permanently attached to the decision record, and the investment committee responds to contrary findings explicitly rather than summarizing them away. Dissent is preserved after the decision, not tidied up.
The honest problem with a first fund
You cannot show returns you have not made. A new vehicle has no realized returns, no audited distributions and no prior investors to reference, and the experience of the people running it reduces that discount without removing it. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling.
What we can show instead is a decision process that is more rigorous than the norm, published in advance, with the record accumulating against it from the first deal onward. That converts “trust us” into “audit us”, which is a considerably stronger position for a first‑time manager, and a considerably harder one to fake.
Where it stands
- 01Not raised. No investor capital committed or soft‑circled.
- 02The vehicle is planned as a segregated portfolio under Matador Digital, a Cayman SPC which is incorporated and operational. The segregated portfolio itself is not formed.
- 03No acquisition target has been identified. Identifying two or three is what gates the raise, and it has not happened.
- 04Led by Sam Rusani and Stuart Yeoman. Team →
If you invest in first funds and want to know when this becomes real, write to us. hello@900labs.com
This page is provided for information. It is not an offer, an invitation, a financial promotion, or investment advice, and it is not directed at any person in any jurisdiction where such a communication would be unlawful.