ACT Capital
This is a work in progress and will be updated over time. Last updated: 14.01.26.
In this post I will briefly introduce ACT Capital, an investment firm focused entirely on creating progress.
Our mission:
My definition of making progress is to make human lives better. I disagree with everyone arguing that something is progress without it actually making human lives better. Since progress isn’t straightforward, I wrote this article which gives you a good intro to how I think about it. By committing to it, ACT aim’s to always leave the world better after our investments than before. Progress is our constraint. It isn’t negotiable.
Another reason for ACT Capital: most money is allocated in ways that doesn’t benefit humanity. It’s wasted, or it ends up in the pockets of people who contribute nothing to society.
Our work:
We don’t predict. Predicting is not what an investment firm should do. It should be a builder of the future: using capital to push reality toward possibilities that wouldn’t happen on their own.
We start by incubating and investing and working closely with companies. We also do opportunity investing. Other strategies that let us actively shape the future are fine too, but likely less important at the beginning.
We believe in science and technology. It’s power to transform the lives of people is unmatched. Nevertheless it’s neutral. Things can go very well or very badly, but its potential to create the kind of progress we care about is incomparable.
We’re hyper realistic about how the world works, and we act on how we think it could be better. We combine that realism with imagination: we actively form our own view of the future.
Our main research domains are science, technology, humans, money, control & power. Everything about that research that we want to make publicly available, will be shared through this newsletter, The Bougnat.
We spend most of our time figuring things out by thinking, working hard, and discovering possibilities and solutions.
The business:
Our mission and our focus define what we notice, and therefore the opportunities we have. Progress is where value comes from. By focusing on progress, we aim to find opportunities that generate significant returns through value creation and value capture.
The business model is simple: invest and make returns. We make large, concentrated bets on what we consider to be great opportunities. No hedging.
We are principled and always prefer action over speculation, building over waiting, concentration over diversification, to think for ourselves, to be for-profit, to think long-term.
Aligning incentives: we need to align incentives between the investors, the investment manager, and the companies or people we invest in. There is one big issue however which is one of the two reasons I abandoned the idea of an investment firm a couple of years ago (besides not seeing how investing could create real progress at the time) and put a hard stop to what I was doing. The investor wants as much money as quickly as possible. The investment manager wants, flexibility, and freedom to find the right opportunities. The people and companies want long term capital. The solution comes from Warren Buffett and has been adopted by many of the best investors today: you invest capital that belongs to the investment manager, instead of relying on outside LPs. That’s permanent capital. That’s what ACT is going for in the long term.
I want a team that scales to 15 people max. That’s how I imagine it for now.
While ACT will necessarily change, progress will be its focus forever. Everything else can change, size of the company, duration, stage (public/private), asset class, based on what we identify as the best path to progress and capturing some of the value it creates.
Business structure:
There will be two entities:
ACT Capital, the venture studio. Takes care of operations and incubating new projects and companies.
The investment fund. No solution for switzerland yet. (One possibility: a kind of self organizing investment fund. Within this club are 2 types of contributors. The Investors: contribute capital (cash) and me contributing industry. The profits will be shared following agreed terms.) or (other possibility: create a LLC for every deal and investments seperately. so investors essentially become shareholders of the llc. Then give decision rights to person in charge of investments r the venture studio.)
The first steps:
I will organize Friday night working hours. As soon as we open our café with kilometre zero. Before the opening I will do dinner or drinks every Friday with the people who are working towards progress, humanity, and beauty.
On the investment side I will start by myself, raise money and start incubating and investing as soon as I find great opportunities. I believe the Friday nights to bring along great opportunities.
I want to recruit a team over time for more opportunities to create progress.