Bradley Tusk says it makes more money with “justice to service” than as a traditional VC

Bradley Tusk, co -founder and managing partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told TechCrunch in Today’s episode of justice This VC, as we know, is dead. And this has been in the last four years.

“There may be some VC that I have never heard of that this has been a content of liquidity over the last few years, but we have not returned $ 1 to our LPS capital for four years,” Tusk said.

VC has had a rough few years thanks to the higher interest rates, crashes start -ups from 2021, and stimulates IPO and M&A transactions.

Many investors have been holding their breath for President Donald Trump to rejuvenate the landscape of VC with deregulatory measures and tax reforms for pro-business. However, the uncertainty after Trump’s record executive orders, Tariffs commercial wars and Dismantling federal agencies has attached the expected jump in the activity of VC.

Or, as Tusk said, “I just don’t know very serious economists who believe that trade war is a good idea for someone’s economy.”

Thus, Tusk bowed from the traditional VC model and decided not to recruit a fourth fund. Instead, he transfers the focus to the “Justice for Service” model, which allows Tusk to accept justice in exchange for assistance to startup companies in the regulatory environment, legislative communications and government contracts.

For Tusk, the capital-for service returns to its roots. In 2010, when he just started his political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, what was then a small transport technology company called Uber, joined his services. Uber had no money to pay him, so they offered him his own capital. Tusk spent the next few years “campaigning across the United States to legalize Uber and sharing a ride.”

The creation of regulatory frameworks for destructive technologies for rescuing start -ups from politics from politics has been the bread and butter of Tusk for years, an experience he has won through previous roles as the manager of the Michael Bloomberg mayoral race in 2009 and Deputy Governor of Illinois.

All the “real VC things”, such as fundraising and “conformity, on board, construction of a portfolio”, just began to feel like a scattering of the type of work it actually likes to do.

And he feels like a shortcut to do the work he loves, while actually making more money than he can make as a classic investor of an endeavor.

“When I realized that I could just get up to lid tables and get capital from startup companies that I like in exchange for my experience, the traditional model just didn’t make much sense,” Tusk said.

“I actually earned more money when I was in service shares, because although there is less leverage than a venture check, you maintain 100% of the receipts,” he said. “While in the traditional endeavor I have to return the investment capital to investors. I have to pay off the fees, then I have to give them 80 cents for the dollar,” he said.

Tusk Venture Partners will continue to support its existing portfolio companies until the fund’s life cycle ends in 2031.