Fund as a Service Is Reshaping Venture Capital

What’s Happening

There’s a quiet revolution happening in fund formation, and it’s moving fast. Roundtable, a platform positioning itself as the go-to “Fund as a Service” infrastructure layer, is gaining serious traction by promising something that used to sound absurd: launch your own investment fund in days, not months. The pitch is simple — handle the legal scaffolding, compliance, banking, tax reporting, and back-office operations so that aspiring fund managers can focus on what they actually want to do: find and back great companies.

This isn’t an entirely new idea. AngelList pioneered rolling funds and SPVs years ago, making it dramatically easier for angels and micro-VCs to pool capital. But the latest wave of fund-as-a-service platforms, Roundtable chief among them, is going further — targeting a broader class of operators, community leaders, and domain experts who want to run proper venture funds without hiring a $50,000-a-year fund administrator or spending six figures on legal setup. According to PitchBook’s 2025 VC Fund Administration Report, the number of emerging manager funds (sub-$50M) has grown over 40% since 2022, creating enormous demand for streamlined infrastructure.

The timing is telling. We’re seeing this trend accelerate precisely when LP appetite for smaller, thesis-driven funds is returning after the 2023-2024 funding winter. Operators who built audiences, networks, or deep domain expertise during the downturn are now converting that social capital into actual capital — and platforms like Roundtable are the rails making it possible.

Why Founders Should Care

If you’re a startup founder, you might wonder why fund infrastructure matters to you. Here’s the short answer: the people writing your next check are increasingly not traditional VCs. They’re operators-turned-fund-managers, community leaders, and vertical specialists who run lean funds built on these new platforms. Understanding this shift gives you a strategic edge in fundraising.

The market opportunity is enormous on both sides. For founders considering the leap to fund management — and many serial founders do exactly this — the barriers have collapsed. Traditional fund formation involved engaging a fund attorney ($25K-$75K), a fund administrator ($15K-$30K/year), setting up a GP entity, an LP entity, a management company, compliance filings, bank accounts across multiple jurisdictions, and tax preparation infrastructure. The whole process routinely took three to six months and cost six figures before a single dollar was deployed. Fund-as-a-service platforms compress this into a guided workflow that can be completed in under a week, often for a fraction of the cost.

The broader market signal matters too. According to PitchBook data, emerging managers now represent nearly 30% of all new venture funds raised annually in the U.S. That’s a massive addressable market for infrastructure providers — and it tells founders that the check-writing landscape is diversifying rapidly. The angels and scouts of 2020 are the GP-1 fund managers of 2026, and they’re running real money on programmable infrastructure.

Who’s Already Moving

Several companies are competing — or cooperating — in this space, and it’s worth knowing who they are.

• Roundtable — The company that sparked this trend conversation. Roundtable offers end-to-end fund formation including legal entity creation, LP onboarding, capital call automation, portfolio tracking, and tax filing. They’re specifically targeting first-time and emerging managers who want institutional-grade infrastructure without institutional-grade costs. Their pitch emphasizes speed: fund launch in days, not months.

• AngelList — Still the 800-pound gorilla. AngelList has processed billions in venture capital through its rolling funds and SPV products. They’ve continually expanded their stack to include fund accounting, tax, and compliance. AngelList’s advantage is network effects — LPs already have accounts, and GPs can tap into existing investor bases. The downside? Some emerging managers feel locked into AngelList’s ecosystem and pricing model.

• Carta — Originally a cap table management tool, Carta has moved aggressively into fund administration. They now offer full-service fund admin for venture funds and are a major player for funds that are slightly more established. Their integration with cap table data gives them a unique data advantage, though they’ve faced controversy around data privacy practices in the past.

• Allocations — A smaller but scrappy competitor focused specifically on making SPVs and micro-funds accessible. Allocations targets a similar demographic as Roundtable but has carved out a niche with syndicate leaders and deal-by-deal investors who want speed and simplicity over full fund infrastructure.

“The best investors of the next decade won’t come from finance — they’ll come from operating. They’ll be founders, engineers, and community builders. Our job is to make sure the infrastructure isn’t what stops them.” — Roundtable team, via company blog

The Startup Opportunity

If you’re a founder looking at this space with builder eyes, here’s where the opportunities are sharpest right now:

• Vertical-specific fund platforms. Roundtable and AngelList are horizontal plays — they serve any kind of fund. But there’s a wide-open lane for fund-as-a-service platforms tailored to specific verticals. Imagine a purpose-built fund formation tool for real estate syndicates, climate tech investors, or crypto-native funds with on-chain LP management. The compliance and reporting requirements differ meaningfully across asset classes, and a verticalized approach could win on depth.

• LP tooling and intelligence. The GP side of the equation is getting all the love right now, but LPs — the people actually writing checks into funds — are badly underserved. Tools that help LPs discover, evaluate, benchmark, and manage their fund commitments represent a massive gap. Think of it as the “Robinhood moment” for fund investing: making LP participation accessible to a broader class of accredited investors and institutions.

• Compliance and regulatory automation. Fund managers face a thicket of regulatory obligations — SEC registration requirements, state blue sky laws, Form D filings, KYC/AML checks, and ongoing reporting obligations. Most fund-as-a-service platforms handle this adequately but not elegantly. A dedicated compliance-as-a-service layer that integrates with multiple fund platforms could build a durable, high-margin business.

• Fund analytics and portfolio monitoring. Once a fund is launched, the real work begins. Emerging managers need tools to track portfolio company performance, generate LP reports, manage capital calls and distributions, and model fund economics (DPI, TVPI, IRR). The existing tools are either enterprise-grade and expensive or janky spreadsheets. There’s a sweet spot in the middle for well-designed, affordable portfolio intelligence software aimed at sub-$50M funds.

Watch Out For

Let’s be honest about what could go wrong, because there’s a real downside to making fund formation this easy.

The quality problem. Lowering barriers to fund formation means more funds will be launched by people who have no business managing other people’s money. We saw this with rolling funds in 2021 — a flood of hype-driven micro-funds that deployed capital poorly and left LPs holding the bag. Speed of formation doesn’t equal quality of judgment. Platforms that don’t impose some curation or education layer risk enabling a lot of bad actors and inexperienced managers.

Regulatory risk is real and growing. The SEC has been increasingly attentive to the proliferation of private fund vehicles. The Private Fund Advisers rules introduced in 2023 imposed new reporting and transparency requirements, and there’s ongoing discussion about lowering the threshold for investment adviser registration. Any fund-as-a-service platform is one regulatory change away from a significant business model disruption. Founders building in this space need to treat regulatory risk as a first-order concern, not an afterthought.

Commoditization pressure. Fund formation is becoming a race to the bottom on pricing. When the core offering — setting up legal entities and filing paperwork — becomes automated, margins compress quickly. The winners in this space will need to build defensibility through network effects, data advantages, or value-added services that go beyond basic formation. Simply being the cheapest or fastest fund setup tool won’t be enough.

LP fatigue. There are only so many institutional and high-net-worth LPs willing to back emerging managers. As the number of new funds grows, competition for LP dollars intensifies. This could create a shakeout where many newly formed funds fail to raise their targets, which in turn would reduce demand for fund-as-a-service platforms. The macro environment for LP allocations matters enormously, and it’s not something these platforms can control.

The Bottom Line

Fund as a service is one of those infrastructure trends that looks boring on the surface but reshapes entire ecosystems underneath. The democratization of fund formation means that the next generation of great investors will look nothing like the last one — they’ll be former founders, community operators, and domain experts who can now set up proper fund structures in a week for a few thousand dollars. For startup founders, this means your fundraising landscape is fragmenting in ways that can work in your favor, giving you access to investors who actually understand your market.

If you’re a builder, the opportunity here isn’t just to launch a fund — it’s to build the picks-and-shovels infrastructure that an entire new class of fund managers will depend on. The formation layer is getting crowded fast, so look upstream (LP tooling, compliance automation) or downstream (portfolio analytics, fund-of-fund infrastructure) for the most durable opportunities. And if you’re an operator thinking about making the jump to fund management yourself? The tools are ready. The question is whether you are.