A New Website and a New Positioning for Deal Box

Deal Box has a new website, and with it a new way of describing what we do. Here is the idea behind it.

Put money into a venture fund and you will probably wait ten years to see it again. By late 2025, only one in four venture funds started in 2021 had returned any money to its investors, according to Carta's data on the funds it administers.

That is the deal venture capital has always offered. You hand your money to a manager, the manager buys small pieces of young companies, and everyone waits for one of them to be sold or go public. Many investors cannot lock money away that long, so they stay out. Founders feel it too. When funds are still waiting on their last bets, they write fewer new checks.

Key Takeaways:

• Venture funds usually run ten years or more, and their investors get paid when a company is sold or goes public.
• Through Q3 2025, 25% of 2021 venture funds on Carta had returned any money to their investors. For 2022 funds it was 15%.
• Tokenization lets a company offer other shapes of investment, such as a token designed to pay holders a share of revenue for a set number of years. Payments depend on the company earning that revenue.
• Designing those shapes, keeping them legal and taking them live to investors is Internet Capital Formation.
• Deal Box has put nine families of structures on paper for clients since 2019. It takes no cut of any raise.

Venture means a ten-year wait. It isn't the only way to raise.

Here is how venture works today. A fund collects money from its investors and spends its first five years or so buying into young companies. The money comes back only when one of those companies is sold or goes public, and the whole cycle tends to run a decade or more, according to Carta's fund data.

Lately the wait has stretched. The best companies are staying private longer, and funds that invested at 2021 prices are still waiting for their first sale. Even a fund in the top tenth of the 2021 class had paid back about 12 cents on each dollar by late 2025.

This is the thing. A slice of a company is one shape of investment, and it usually pays at one moment. That moment is the day someone buys the company, and for many companies it never comes.

Other shapes of the same investment

A company can offer its investors something other than a slice it might sell in ten years. Tokenization makes that practical, because the token carries its terms with it and the record of who owns it lives in one place.

• A revenue-share token is designed to pay holders a share of the company's revenue for a set number of years, on the terms in its offering documents. Payments follow how the business is doing. If revenue falls, payments fall, and they can stop.
• Tokenized equity is a digital share that works like stock. It still pays on a sale or a listing, with a cleaner record of who owns it.
• Fund units are a stake in a pool of assets, with distributions paid under the fund's terms.

None of these is a promise of returns. Each one is a set of terms that a company designs, discloses and offers under securities law. Each one is also a risky, illiquid investment, and a holder can lose everything they put in. Private securities carry holding rules too, so a token is not something an investor can always sell the next day.

What it could look like for a real business

Here is a hypothetical. Picture a regional company that installs heating and cooling systems. It earns steady revenue every month, and it will probably never be bought by a tech giant. Under the old deal it is invisible to venture capital, because there is no ten-year exit to wait for.

A revenue-share offering changes the question. The company could ask investors for growth money in exchange for a share of its revenue for, say, five years. Its investors would watch monthly sales, which they can understand, instead of waiting on a buyer who may never show up. The trade-off is real on both sides. Investors share in sales, not in any rise in the company's value, and the company owes those payments out of its revenue.

The shape is the hard part

Minting a token takes an afternoon. The work is everything around it. Someone has to decide what investors actually buy, write down what can go wrong, choose the exemption the offering is made under and confirm who is allowed to buy. The SEC's guide to general solicitation shows how much rides on that one choice. Then come the signatures, the money and the record of who owns what.

That work has a name. Internet Capital Formation is the work of turning a company or asset into an investable, compliant instrument and taking it live to investors over the internet. Internet Capital Markets are where these assets trade, and they can only trade what someone formed first. Internet Capital Markets need Internet Capital Formation.

What we have built

We have done this work since 2016, and we have packaged more than 100 companies in that time. Since 2019 we have put nine families of structures on paper for clients, from revenue-share security tokens and tokenized equity units to future-token agreements, single-asset feeder funds and digital-asset funds. Three of the 2019 revenue-share token offerings shared one architecture, which turned that structure into a reusable module instead of a one-off.

When an offering is ready, it goes live on one link that carries the offering, investor onboarding and the papers investors sign. Offerings on Deal Box are open only to accredited investors whose status has been verified. Deal Box takes $0 of the raise, and the money goes from the investor straight to the company. Investors pay no platform fee, because we are paid by the companies we work with.

If you are raising now

If your business earns real revenue and the ten-year story does not fit it, there may be a better shape for your raise. Work it out with your own counsel, start with the instrument, and everything after it gets easier.

Start a raise or book a call.

FAQ

Why do venture investors wait so long to get paid?

A venture fund pays its investors when the companies it backed are sold or go public. Funds spend about five years investing and the full cycle usually runs ten years or more. Many companies now stay private longer, so the wait has grown.

What is a revenue-share token?

It is a security, issued as a token, that is designed to pay holders a share of a company's revenue for a set period. What holders receive depends on how much the company earns, and it can be nothing. It is not a promise of returns, and its terms are set out in the offering documents.

Who can buy these tokens, and can they be resold?

Offerings on Deal Box are open only to verified accredited investors. Tokens sold in private offerings are usually restricted securities, with holding periods and limits on who can buy them, so they cannot always be sold. Each offering's documents say when and how a token can be transferred.

What is Internet Capital Formation?

Internet Capital Formation is the work of turning a company or asset into an investable, compliant instrument and taking it live to investors over the internet. It runs from designing the instrument and the disclosure through investor onboarding to the record of who owns what.

What does Deal Box do?

Deal Box packages offerings for companies, from the structure to the documents and the story. It then runs the raise from one link that carries the offering, investor onboarding and the papers investors sign. It has packaged more than 100 companies since 2016. It takes no cut of any raise, and investors pay no platform fee.

Educational only. Not legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. Deal Box is not a broker-dealer, placement agent, investment adviser, or custodian. All offerings are issuer-direct and issuer-approved. Nothing here is an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security. Investing in private companies is speculative and illiquid, and investors can lose their entire investment. The structures described are examples of offering terms, not a promise of payment or returns. The example company is hypothetical. Third-party figures are as reported at the time of writing.