Don\u2019t Quit Ventures, a $10 million debut fund led by solo general partner Noa Khamallah, has completed its second close with a portfolio marked at 2.5 times invested capital, driven by early investments in high-profile artificial intelligence and software startups.<\/p>\n
The fund has generated three unicorns across its 17 initial investments\u2014a hit rate of nearly 18%, compared with the venture capital<\/a> industry average of roughly 1.4%\u2014with holdings including Mira Murati\u2019s Thinking Machine Lab, AMI Labs, and Replit<\/a>, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n Demonstrating rare early liquidity in a tight venture market, DQV distributed cash back to limited partners 14 months after its initial close, realizing a 1.5x return on the partial sale of a portfolio stake.<\/p>\n The fund\u2019s performance underscores an expanding return divide between micro-funds and mega-cap venture vehicles. Data from Carta\u2019s fourth-quarter 2025 report shows funds under $10 million continuing to outperform vehicles exceeding $100 million in both realized distributions and paper gains. Similarly, research from iCapital indicates sub-$275 million funds achieved a 36% return, compared with 24% for larger funds.<\/p>\n That outperformance comes amid an unprecedented contraction in debut fund creation. Only 101 first-time venture funds launched in 2025\u2014the lowest figure in 14 years\u2014while the 10 largest venture funds captured over one-third of all capital raised, more than double their market share from five years ago.<\/p>\n “The quality of relationship building and being extremely relationship-driven and extremely commercial at the same time is very hard,” said Michael Str\u00f6ck, whose firm Allocator One anchored DQV’s initial close. Str\u00f6ck, whose firm evaluates more than 800 fund managers annually and selects fewer than 1%, pushed back against institutional hesitation surrounding solo-general-partner structures, arguing that multi-partner splits pose a higher statistical risk than single-manager incapacitation.<\/p>\n Khamallah, a former convict and school dropout who built his initial network through cold outreach to figures such as Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun and musical artist Fetty Wap, represents a growing subset of micro-venture managers operating with lean capital structures, where modest exits generate fund-returning impact that larger pools of capital cannot match.<\/p>\n