Fish Network — Product FAQs
About Fish Network
What is the Fish Network?
Fish Network is a platform that allows emerging managers to launch fully functional & reliable community driven capital vehicles investing in real world assets on-chain, leveraging built-in identity tooling to support compliance.
What is the purpose of the Fish Network?
Fish Network is a transparent system for private capital, and functions as a liquidity abstraction layer between the full spectrum of emerging managers and allocators, ultimately routing capital to the best performing emerging managers(Fish School Organizers) in the long run.
What geographies are supported by Fish Network?
Fish Network is currently available to US citizens only. All Fish Schools are currently domiciled in Wyoming as LLCs or DAO LLCs.
Why did you choose Coinbase?
We leverage BASE L2 as a go-to-market strategy to deliberately drive stablecoin investment into Fish Schools. We also leverage Coinbase to KYC investors and enable them to discover and invest in promising emerging managers.
Coinbase Wallet offers free identity registration using CB.ID with a Base.eth domain, which enables the Fish Network to easily KYC its users. For Fish Schools, a KYB process is implemented to sign transactions on behalf of the Investment Clubs by its Fish School Organizers.
What is a NeoFund?
Similar to neobanks, a neofund is a digitally native investment fund that is built and operated using modern fintech infrastructure rather than traditional fund administration, distribution, and operations.
A neofund is an investment fund that:
- Is software-first
- Uses automation, APIs, and digital onboarding
- Often offers lower minimums, faster setup, and broader access
- Reimagines how funds are formed, managed, and accessed
A Fish School is a standardized framework for neofunds built for private markets.
What is Futarchy in relation to Fish Network?
Fish Network extends the concept of futarchy to startup and investment club equity. This form of reverse (equity, instead of token-based) futarchy aims to give investors more control over outcomes through active governance strategies.
By enabling investors to vote through transparent on-chain systems, we give investors more rights and transparency, while enabling them to collaborate and turn shared beliefs into real economic outcomes.
What is the relationship between Iron Key Capital and Fish Network?
Iron Key Capital incubated Fish Network's MVP, and created the first Fish School to prove out Fish Network's product strategy.
Iron Key now supports the Fish Network ecosystem with education(a free Emerging Manager program), distribution(social media), and services for Fish Schools to help them achieve a competitive advantage in private markets.
Fish Schools
What is a Fish School?
A Fish School is a group of individuals that collectively pool capital to achieve a shared investment outcome. Members typically share similar domain experience and invest together to significantly reduce the cost and time of diligencing and sourcing opportunities.
A Fish School is a blockchain-enabled investment vehicle structure that enables collaborative investing together with transparent governance and capital accounts.
How is a Fish School regulated?
A Fish School is an on-chain vehicle for member-managed investment clubs to pool capital and make collective investment decisions, structured to operate within the private-offering exemption under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933.
What types of Fish Schools are available on Fish Network?
We currently support one type: private investment funds. We offer two governance types: manager-managed and member-managed. Algorithmically managed (smart contract) governance is planned for the future.
What is the minimum $ size for a Fish School?
The minimum size of a Fish School is ~$25-$50k USD, although Fish Network recommends targeting $500k or more for sufficient portfolio diversification. Conversely, it is possible to create Fish Schools where concentration is the objective, rather than optimizing for diversification.
What are the fees in a Fish School?
It depends on the Fish School. Fish School Organizers may charge a flat fee which is disclosed up front to investors. Additionally, the Fish School can choose to allocate capital to administrative expenses as well.
The Organizer fee + admin expenses cannot be greater than 20% of the committed capital. All operating costs, fees, and expenses are absorbed within this 20%. This is nominally analogous to a VC fund with a 10 year fund life that charges 2% management fees.
How do Fish School fee structures operate?
Fish Schools have a front-loaded fee structure where administrative and Organizer fees are taken immediately upon successful close of a Fish School's capital raise.
Typically the Fish School Organizer will allocate administrative fees for various business development, deal vetting & coordination activities to help setup the Fish School for success. This is no different than a Fund Manager spending management fees on physical office space or necessary software.
How quickly can I launch a Fish School?
Launching a Fish School and deploying capital can be done in the same business day. Fish Network provides access to all the necessary support services such as legal, tax, and accounting directly on its platform.
Can I launch my own investment club on Fish Network?
Yes! With our no-code club setup, you can form and operate a member-led investment club with your network, run your own diligence, and manage governance and capital accounting in one place — without needing to build custom infrastructure or processes from scratch. You can also bring your own entity docs if the Master Series LLC structure or Wyoming DAO isn't what you need.
Can I launch multiple Fish Schools?
Yes, you can launch as many as you want using a Master Series LLC structure. However, each Fish School should have a clearly defined thesis and investment strategy. Keep in mind that you may not want to spread resources too thin across multiple Fish Schools when just getting started.
How is a syndicate different from a Fish School?
A syndicate is formed for the purpose of a single asset investment, while a Fish School can make an unlimited number of individual investments. Furthermore, syndicates are typically considered funds and charge carried interest. Fish Schools are member-managed private investment vehicles designed to split risk and reward, they cannot charge carry or management fees because they they are investment clubs. Members of Fish Schools pool their capital to make decisions together, while syndicated deals are typically chosen by an individual.
Instead of a syndicate lead chasing investors for a specific deal, Fish Schools lock capital in a smart contract beforehand.
Can Fish Schools and syndicates be used together?
Yes. Fish Schools can be leveraged as a precursor to a traditional syndicate. Fish School members can vote to syndicate one or more deals and allocate some of the capital raised through the Fish School into the syndicate.
Furthermore, using Fish Schools to fund earlier-stage deals while using traditional syndicates as follow-on capital represents a compelling strategy for emerging managers. This can improve capital efficiency by securing pro-rata rights through the Fish School and using SPVs to exercise the pro-rata rights as follow-on investments.
Fish Network allows users to leverage both Fish Schools and traditional syndicates directly on its platform to provide emerging managers unmatched optionality.
How does Fish Network compare to other solutions for emerging managers?
- COST: Fish Schools are more capital efficient because they enable FSOs to avoid large (approximately $10k/deal on AngelList) fees for each individual deal.
- DIVERSIFICATION: Fish Schools introduce the ability for retail private market investors to achieve sufficient levels of portfolio diversification inside and across multiple Fish Schools.
- TRANSPARENCY: Fish Schools by default enable previously unseen levels of transparency, helping investors streamline diligence and facilitate trust between Fish and Organizers.
- PRIVACY: Fish Schools enable privacy by default, with social interaction and transparency as explicitly opt-in features by the user.
How does Fish Network provide flexibility to its emerging managers?
Shoal Leads can run traditional SPVs and investment clubs from one ownership dashboard. Fish Schools can be converted into a Regulation D fund structure directly on the platform, provided all the members are accredited. Track record and previous investments are portable into a new fish school, and can be exported off platform. You own your own data.
Can Fish Schools invest only in tokenized real-world assets and/or crypto?
No. We support off-chain investments in venture capital, M&A(soon), and real estate(soon). Our initial cohort of emerging managers are focused on venture capital exclusively. Fish Network is built to support hybrid structures (liquid + illiquid assets).
How do you value a Fish School?
Fish Schools can be valued by valuing the individual assets inside of the LLC. A conservative approach could be to assume each investor deposits the minimum check size of $10k. With a hard limit of 99 members, this would value the Fish School at approximately $1M USD. This scenario also assumes the Fish School's investments return just 1x (i.e. there are no profits).
The Fish School's exposure is collateralized by the real assets and capital in the investment club entity.
What happens when I deposit money into a Fish School?
When an investor deposits capital into a Fish School, they receive Fish Points + the native investment club token.
Can Fish Schools accept different types of stablecoins and crypto as deposits?
Currently, we accept USDC only. However, our Fish Schools automate the accounting and tax collection processes and can handle most types of inbound deposits in the future.
How do traditional capital calls work on Fish Network?
There are no capital calls on Fish Network. Instead, each Fish has one "capital call" of 100% each time they invest in a Fish School, with platform fees automatically deducted from the deposit.
How do my investments on Fish Network count towards my VC or Private Equity track record?
All successful and failed investments are recorded on-chain through Fish Points, allowing investors to transparently evaluate emerging managers in real-time.
Fish Pools
What is a Fish Pool?
A Fish Pool is a minimum viable investment vehicle designed to handle a single asset and no more than 99 investor members. A Fish Pool is the integrated legal, financial, and technical medium through which individual private market assets are held, capitalized, and transacted.
Fish Pools do not charge carried interest or fees and are considered a public good for the Fish Network ecosystem.
The Fish Pool is the atomic unit of investment in the Fish Network ecosystem, and the initial building block upon which Fish Schools are built.
Roles
What is a Fish School Organizer?
A Fish School Organizer (FSO) is a vetted individual responsible for leading and managing a Fish School investment club. They oversee deal sourcing, investor communication, compliance, and execution of investment decisions on behalf of the group. Fish School Organizers are typically subject matter experts who guide participants, coordinate voting processes, and ensure that investments are made in alignment with the club's goals and governance model.
Can I call myself Managing Partner or General Partner of a Fish School?
No, you cannot use the titles Managing Partner or General Partner as there are legal and fiduciary responsibilities typically associated with these titles. Instead, our Fish Schools are structured as investment clubs, and we use the term Fish School Organizer to signify leadership responsibilities in our Fish Schools.
Do I need to be an accredited investor to participate?
Not necessarily; accreditation for investment clubs is evaluated on a state level in the US. Many states allow for non-accredited investors to participate but with limits on the amounts that can be contributed.
Can I invest directly into a startup?
Currently we only support investment into Fish Schools (i.e. investment clubs). In the future you will be able to invest into startups using USD or USDC directly from your phone.
Why is this better than traditional crowdfunding?
We only present deals to investors that are proposed by Fish School Organizers (FSOs) or Fish themselves and moderated by their FSO. This leads to higher quality deal flow.
Investors organize into groups with diverse individual skillsets, but collective deep domain expertise; this also helps achieve economies of scale through cost sharing on diligence and sourcing. Members can collaborate to make better decisions together.
Furthermore, we don't charge founders anything, so Fish Network's incentives are aligned with investors using the platform.
What are Fish Shoals?
In nature, Fish Shoals are groups of different species of fish formed for social reasons.
Fish Shoals are broader networks of investors. Fish Shoals can represent B2B venture ecosystems, or the broader collective of individuals behind large investor communities.
What are Fish Shoal Leads?
A Fish Shoal Lead is a group leader dedicated to one or more verticals within private markets, such as real estate, art, or precious metals.
These Fish Shoals typically operate service or software businesses within private capital markets, or represent professional investment firms operating a multi-manager approach.
A Shoal Lead is typically a business or VC fund that wants to coordinate capital and community. Fish Shoals can administer and organize a collection of individual Fish Schools in order to achieve a specific business outcome, and also monetize services within their broader Shoal investor network.
Why would a VC want to operate as a Shoal Leader?
Some possible reasons include:
- Ability to operationalize and execute a software-enabled turn-key multi-manager platform approach to help retain and empower top talent
- As a competitive advantage to introduce liquidity for their investor base
- A mechanism to activate and monetize smaller investors who are able to write $25k checks or less, but do not fit the profile of a traditional Limited Partner (LP)
- An enhanced community + brand building strategy; activating and coordinating founders + investors together who share similar ideas
Governance & Structure
How do investment decisions get sourced and executed inside of Fish Schools?
Fish School members (also known as Fish) submit deals to be reviewed and vetted by Fish School Organizer(s). Then, the FSOs approve a shortlist of investments to be voted on by all Fish. Deals that surpass simple majority vote (>51%) are automatically executed.
How do governance decisions get made inside of Fish Schools?
Governance and operational decisions are typically made and voted on by all members of the Fish Schools; Organizers typically carry out these decisions.
Can you combine SPVs and investment clubs inside the same Master Series?
The Master Series acts as a holding company so the liabilities and assets within each Fish School and/or SPV are segregated. Each Fish School is created as a separate Series within its respective Master Series LLC.
In the Fish School context, what is a Fish Shoal based on its natural analogy?
Drawing from biology, a Fish Shoal refers to any group of fish that stay together for social reasons, often including different species, sizes, and loose interactions where fish swim somewhat independently but remain connected. This mirrors the structure of a holding company owning multiple Master Series LLCs for traditional SPVs, investment clubs, and venture studios, enabling liability separation and standardization of workflows.
Fish Points
What are Fish Points?
Fish Points are non-transferrable reputation tokens minted to verified participants for actively contributing to Fish Schools or Shoals. They decay over time to ensure ongoing engagement, and can be slashed for poor behaviour.
Fish Points are calculated and generated via compliance attestations which help aggregate and verify investor reputation and track record.
Investment Clubs & SEC
What is the SEC definition of an Investment Club?
An investment club is a group of individuals who pool their capital to invest collectively. According to the SEC, investment clubs must meet specific conditions to remain exempt from registration and regulatory burdens. (Investment Clubs – SEC Guidance)