Recently, I noticed a pretty interesting phenomenon. Naval personally stepped in, directly serving as the chairman of the USVC Investment Committee. This move itself reveals quite a lot.

It’s important to understand that Naval has never been the type to easily endorse financial products. His identity is complex—co-founder of AngelList, a representative of Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit, and a long-term symbolic figure in the Web3 world. When he chooses to step forward personally, it goes beyond the level of “a new fund launching.”

I see this more as AngelList’s retail upgrade of the entrepreneurial financing infrastructure over the past ten-plus years. In the past, AngelList connected a small circle of entrepreneurs, angel investors, and fund managers. Now, it aims to turn the exclusive access to venture capital—once reserved for a few—into an entry point that ordinary people can participate in.

The most direct feature of USVC is its low threshold—starting at $500, no accreditation required. Its early portfolio includes names like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. But this isn’t just about selling a basket of AI star stocks; it reflects an increasingly sharp question: when the most explosive technological growth happens in private markets, can ordinary people still participate earlier in the future?

The cruelest change of the past decade is actually this—the overall timeline of wealth creation has moved forward. Many of the most important companies have already completed multiple rounds of massive funding and valuation jumps before entering the public market. By the time ordinary investors can finally buy through an IPO, the story has been told countless times, and valuations have been fully priced in by earlier rounds of capital. The true alpha has long been captured by private capital.

Take Manus as an example. Benchmark led a $75 million funding round in April 2025, when Manus was valued at about $500 million. A few months later, Meta acquired it for over $2 billion. Early-stage capital achieved roughly a 4x return on paper in a very short period. That’s the most fascinating part of venture capital—true alpha often occurs before ordinary people even have the chance to enter.

Why is Naval’s involvement so critical? Not just because of his influence, but because he represents a deep understanding of entrepreneurship, capital, and networks. One of AngelList’s most important achievements was loosening the closed circle of startup financing. Today, what USVC is doing is, in a sense, a continuation of that logic—lowering the barrier for ordinary people to access venture capital assets.

But there’s a very real issue here. USVC is not an ETF; its underlying assets are shares in private companies and private funds, which are inherently illiquid, opaque in valuation, and have long exit cycles. The team mentions they hope to allow up to 5% fund redemption per quarter in the future, but that doesn’t mean you can exit anytime.

Fees also need careful consideration. The first-year all-in fee is 2.5%. At first glance, that seems high, but compared to the traditional VC’s 2/20 structure (2% management fee plus 20% profit share annually), it’s more complex. USVC’s claim is that the 2.5% includes underlying fund fees, with AngelList absorbing a portion of those costs in the first year.

The key question is—can USVC, through Naval and AngelList’s network behind it, continue to access truly scarce, high-quality private assets that ordinary investors cannot reach, yet still remain attractively valued? If it’s just repackaging already expensive late-stage star assets for retail investors, then 2.5% doesn’t seem cheap. But if it can provide genuine, scarce, and worth-paying-for venture capital rights, then this fee is more like an entry cost into the venture capital network.

Interestingly, USVC and the Web3 narrative are intersecting here in a subtle way. Web3 has long talked about financial equality—DeFi allows ordinary people to lend and trade on-chain, and RWA (Real-World Assets) aim to bring real assets onto the blockchain. But USVC takes a different route: it doesn’t realize openness through tokens, but instead through SEC-registered funds, compliant distribution channels, and network effects like Naval, bringing previously closed private tech assets to ordinary investors.

Different paths, but the underlying question remains the same: who has the right to own the future? USVC may not be a ticket to guaranteed returns, but more likely a ticket to get closer to the future earlier.