We are a small early-stage investor, and this site sets out the one idea at the centre of how we look at founders: that coming through real difficulty can build things that matter for building a company. Not always, and not romantically. But often enough, and clearly enough, that we think it deserves more attention than it usually gets.
adversity capital
noun · not transferable
01
It starts with something you cannot buy.
Hard experience, worked through and learned from, leaves behind resilience, judgement and resourcefulness. We treat that as a form of capital in its own right.
What it is02
Five kinds of capital get priced. One does not.
Founders are backed on money, skills, networks, polish and industry knowledge — all visible, all valued. This one is invisible, so the market rarely pays for it.
Types of capitalSome lifetime adversity beats none — and beats a lot.
Under constraint, founders recombine what is at hand.
Growth comes through the struggle, not the event.
What is learned is control, not helplessness.
03
The evidence is real, and it has limits.
Decades of work link difficulty, met with some control, to resilience. The same work shows too much does lasting harm. We hold both.
The research04
What that looks like once someone is building.
A founder's week is setbacks and decisions made without enough information. People who have done hard before are prepared for it in a way that is difficult to fake.
In businessChosen
Unchosen
05
It arrives in many forms.
Some people chose theirs; most did not. What matters to us is the person it shaped, not the category they fit.
Many formsWhat we do
We are an early-stage investor. We keep a low profile and mostly work by introduction. When we meet a founder, we try to understand what they have lived through and what they learned from it, alongside everything else an investor normally looks at.
If some of this sounds like your story, you are welcome to write to us. We read every note ourselves.
Write to us